Golden Dome: The Astronomical Cost of Defeating 'Any Foreign Aerial Attack' [View all]

Just days into his second administration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order attempting to do what no other commander in chief has done: build a system for the US to “deter—and defend its citizens and critical infrastructure against—any foreign aerial attack on the Homeland.”

The threats that the so-called Golden Dome is meant to defeat sit mainly in the arsenals of Russia, China and North Korea, which together have hundreds of nuclear missiles and thousands of other weapons that could be used to wage war on the US.

The US has historically relied on a policy of nuclear deterrence, and a limited system of ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska and California, to fend off such an attack. But Trump’s Golden Dome would go much further.

The initiative is intended to create layers of defense systems from the ground to space that will stop incoming missiles launched from anywhere in the world. It would uniquely rely on a system of space-based interceptor satellites that track and destroy missiles in orbit as they hurtle toward a destination on Earth—technology that doesn’t yet exist.

Even if Golden Dome does become operational, there’s no guarantee the system will be 100% effective. What it will look like, who will make it and how much it will cost have still not been made public.

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