The U.S. military’s Golden Dome layered air defense system will be operational by summer 2028, the general overseeing the project said on Wednesday.
The Golden Dome plan, which President Donald Trump announced last year, is to improve homeland defense from missile threats through a layered system of ground, air, and space-based sensors that are designed to detect, track, and intercept incoming projectiles.
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“We’re going to deliver an operational capability by the summer of [2028] that will be able to protect the homeland against a variety of threats,” Golden Dome Director Gen. Michael Guetlein said during a hearing in front of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee on Wednesday.
“The Golden Dome is the cornerstone of our homeland defense posture. It is a necessary and pragmatic response to the growing threat posed by ballistic, hypersonic and advanced cruise missiles, as well as next generation aerial weapons. Nuclear deterrence, complemented by the golden dome, remains the cornerstone of U.S. deterrence strategy,” Marc Berkowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, told lawmakers at the hearing.
The estimated cost for the Golden Dome has grown from $175 billion to $185 billion, he said last month.
“Today, our capability to defend the nation is limited, and its effectiveness is eroding against an increasingly advanced set of threats. Golden Dome will rectify this by creating a layered defense in depth of the United States,” Berkowitz explained, adding that the U.S. defense system currently only consists of “a single layer of ground-based mid-course defense interceptors.”
The threats from foreign countries are growing, and the U.S. military is trying to meet those concerns before it’s too late.
“We are vulnerable to a numerous array of threats that golden dome is being designed to get after,” Guetlein said. “We have traditionally focused on the intercontinental ballistic missile threat, and have not really thought enough about the cruise missile, the hypersonic missile, the ballistic missiles from air or from sea, nor now what we are seeing the expanding counter [drone] threat.”
China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan have all been researching and attempting to develop “an array of novel, advanced, or traditional missile delivery systems with nuclear and conventional payloads, that put our homeland in range,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said during last month’s annual threat assessment hearing in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The Golden Dome is loosely based on Israel’s Iron Dome, though Israel’s version only protects from short-range rockets, missiles, and artillery and Israel is dramatically smaller than the U.S., so America’s version has to defend significantly more territory.
