{"id":46972,"date":"2026-05-15T19:45:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T11:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/what-will-the-golden-dome-cost-gen-guetlein-pushes-back-on-cbo-cost-estimate\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T19:45:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T11:45:58","slug":"what-will-the-golden-dome-cost-gen-guetlein-pushes-back-on-cbo-cost-estimate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/what-will-the-golden-dome-cost-gen-guetlein-pushes-back-on-cbo-cost-estimate\/","title":{"rendered":"What Will the Golden Dome Cost? Gen. Guetlein Pushes Back on CBO Cost Estimate"},"content":{"rendered":"

The head of the Golden Dome program on May 14 strongly disagreed with a new Congressional Budget Office<\/strong> (CBO) estimate that a system along the lines of President Donald Trump\u2019s proposed missile defense initiative could cost upwards of $1.2 trillion over 20 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not estimating what we\u2019re building,\u201d Gen. Michael Guetlein, direct reporting program manager (DRPM) for Golden Dome, said in a common line he uses in response to independent estimates of the program\u2019s potential costs.<\/p>\n

Guetlein was speaking at the \u201cInside the Dome\u201d conference hosted by Tectonic<\/em> and Payload<\/em> in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

Guietlein confirmed it will cost $185 billion, including an extra $10 billion for several space sensor systems not originally envisioned as part of Golden Dome, previously announced in March.<\/p>\n

The CBO report released this week focused on estimating a potential Golden Dome system that aligns with Trump\u2019s original January 2025 executive order that envisioned costly space-based interceptors combined with more ground-based systems that can defend U.S. territory against various kinds of missile and aerial threats, including intercontinental ballistic missiles from Russia and China.<\/p>\n

CBO\u2019s analysis includes a 7,800 satellite constellation of space-based interceptors (SBIs) in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) that could be target up to 10 ICBMs as well as adding more current ground-based systems like Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), Aegis Ashore and THAAD batteries.<\/p>\n

CBO said the largest cost in this kind of system would be the SBI constellation, costing $743 billion over 20 years, largely tied to the sheer constellation size requirements and need to replace SBI\u2019s every five years due to atmospheric drag of LEO systems.<\/p>\n

Guetlein repeated that a report like CBO\u2019s takes legacy capability and \u201cthey take technology from the early 2000s, and then they just multiply that forward by geography of the homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said those systems were designed for overseas regional conflicts with only point defense missions and operated independently.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not what we need for the homeland. We need a regional defense, so it\u2019s a different architecture and you can\u2019t just take what we\u2019ve done in the past and multiply it forward, or you\u2019re going to get large numbers like CBO,\u201d Guetlein continued.<\/p>\n

He also argued CBO did not consult his office directly about his version of the architecture under development. Guetlein again repeated they have not put out much public information on the exact architecture \u201cbecause the intelligence threat is so high.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Golden Dome program chief repeated his mantra that affordability is one of the more decisive issues for space-based interceptors, because he is confident SBIs are not a physics problem, but \u201can economics, scalability problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I cannot do something affordably and scalably, it doesn\u2019t make sense as a nation to go after it, because I cannot bankrupt the nation,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Guietlein admitted the CBO\u2019s architecture is \u201cnot affordable at all, so we\u2019re not going to go do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), who also spoke at the event, conceded the true cost of Golden Dome could be like CBO\u2019s estimate over $1 trillion and thinks that is a necessary level.<\/p>\n

Sheehy said last year he gave a speech that noted as a supporter of Trump\u2019s Golden Dome vision,  \u201cwe also need to be honest with the American people. I said, this will cost in the trillions. That was the area, and what is the latest cost estimate? It\u2019s in the trillions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think as you look at the implications for our terrestrial infrastructure, our active and passive sensor rates, our space-based architecture, it was obvious to me from the beginning, coming from a guy who used to build complex defense systems and air defense systems, understanding the cost of the hardware to field, maintain and lifecycle support \u2013 right away. I went this project, if built to the President\u2019s vision, as it should be, this will be a multi-trillion dollar project, and we\u2019re seeing now that that\u2019s the case. And I think we should be honest people about that,\u201d Sheehy continued.<\/p>\n

This story was first published by Defense Daily<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The head of the Golden Dome program on May 14 strongly disagreed with a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate that a system along the lines of President Donald Trump\u2019s proposed missile defense initiative could cost upwards of $1.2 trillion over 20 years. \u201cThey\u2019re not estimating what we\u2019re building,\u201d Gen. Michael Guetlein, direct reporting program […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46972"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}