Golden Dome to Defend Against Decapitation, Rogue Attacks

October 2026
By Xiaodon Liang

The Golden Dome missile defense initiative is prioritizing defense against “a coercive decapitation or rogue nation attack against the homeland,” the top U.S. Space Force general responsible for the program said Sept. 17.

The announcement by Gen. Michael Guetlein marks the first time a Pentagon official has provided public details on how it plans to realistically implement President Donald Trump’s ambitious January 2025 executive order, which called for a “reference architecture” to defend against all forms of missile attacks “from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.” (See ACT, March 2025.)

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in May 2026 that a comprehensive missile defense system capable of fully implementing the executive order would cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years. In contrast, Guetlein said in March that his program would cost only $185 billion over the next 10 years. He has repeatedly insisted that external independent estimates did not understand the Defense Department’s program architecture, which it has closely guarded until now.

The Pentagon has refused the CBO’s requests for briefings that could inform analysis of the system’s costs, the CBO director for national security analysis, David Mosher, said at an Aug. 19 event at the Brookings Institution.

Guetlein said the Golden Dome would be implemented in two stages, according to his Sept. 17 comments at the Ohio Space Forum, as reported by Aviation Week. The Pentagon would complete the first stage by 2028 and focus on integrating existing capabilities to defend against decapitation—surprise attacks on strategic decision-makers—and rogue state attacks.

The second stage would be complete by 2035 and would rely on “next-generation technologies,” including “directed energy, next-generation communications and sensing, and quantum,” Guetlein said.

One of the most controversial components of a next-generation missile defense system, the Space Force’s space-based interceptor program, cleared its first milestone recently when 12 military contractors passed ground tests to prove system integration capabilities, Guetlein announced Aug. 11 in remarks at an industry conference in Huntsville, Alabama.

The first milestone—four are planned as part of an unusual prize competition—involved moving data from sensors to interceptors and demonstrating spacecraft propulsion systems, Bloomberg reported Aug. 7, citing sources familiar with the program. Not all contractors were tasked with demonstrating the same capabilities, according to the report.

“Gate 1 is to get the design in place and do component-level testing,” Guetlein said at the Aug. 11 conference.

To pass the program’s next milestone, contractors will be asked to flight-test their systems and demonstrate that they can launch interceptors to a designated location in space, according to the Bloomberg report. Flight tests will begin in 2027. (See ACT, November 2025.)

The Space Force will pay $126 million to each team that successfully completes the second milestone. The first firm to complete the test will receive an additional $40 million, Bloomberg reported.

All told, the Space Force anticipates paying out $3.2 billion in prizes to the companies involved in the competition. Larger contracts for production of a full space-based interceptor constellation, if deemed feasible by Guetlein’s directorate, would follow.

Congress appropriated $5.6 billion for the space-based interceptor program in July 2025 through a budget reconciliation act, a small portion of the total $24 billion allocated for missile defense in the same supplemental funding mechanism. The $24 billion is in addition to a $43 billion regular missile defense request in the fiscal year 2026 budget.

For the 2027 fiscal cycle, President Donald Trump has requested that Congress provide an additional $18 billion for Golden Dome projects through a partisan budget reconciliation bill and $68 billion for other missile defense expenses through the regular budget.

That second tranche of Golden Dome funding is now unlikely to materialize, according to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who indicated Sept. 15 that the Senate would “probably” not take up another budget reconciliation bill with additional defense appropriations until after the November midterm elections.

The regular defense budget process also remains deadlocked with no agreement between Senate negotiators on top-line categories. “If they don’t figure it out, there’s no Golden Dome because there is no funding,” Guetlein said in his Aug. 11 comments.

The total cost of a space-based interceptor constellation remains contested. The CBO estimated in May that a constellation capable of intercepting a raid of 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles launched nearly simultaneously would cost $743 billion over 20 years to develop, deploy, and operate.

“If things are not affordable and scalable, we are not going to do it,” Lt. Gen. Brian Gibson, Guetlein’s deputy for the Golden Dome initiative, told The Washington Times in August.

The Pentagon conducted a demonstration of a directed-energy system for defeating drones and cruise missiles June 23 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, advancing a different component of the broader Golden Dome program, according to a social media post by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The test of the directed-energy weapon system, called the Dynamic Defense Autonomous Defeat system, involved autonomous cueing, targeting, and elimination of multiple targets, Hegseth said.