Congress Should Rein in Foolhardy Pursuit of Golden Dome Program

WASHINGTON - A year ago today, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping Executive Order calling for an "Iron Dome for America" to defend "against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries." While such a system, quickly rechristened as "Golden Dome," may sound appealing and prudent for safeguarding the United States, it is and will remain technically unrealistic in practice, profoundly destabilizing and wildly expensive. 

Congress has already provided $24.4 billion for this golden bauble, setting off a race among defense companies looking for a share of the prize. Most notably, this includes $5.6 billion for space-based interceptors to counter nuclear-armed missiles, another concept that sounds exciting but is deeply problematic and would be by far the most expensive part of the plan.

"Trump's Golden Dome space-based interceptor shield is nothing but fool's gold-shiny, but ultimately worthless-and taxpayers would be left footing the bill to defense contractors," said Dr. Laura Grego, senior research director in the Global Security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). "Congress needs to do everything in its power to zero-out funding for the program and limit the long-term damage that President Trump can do with it to U.S. security. There are many better ways to spend this much money and effort." 

President Trump has yet to provide the public with basic information about his plans for Golden Dome, legitimate cost estimates, a cogent timeline, or justification for why Greenland is "essential" or the program. In fact, many of these claims have no basis in reality, while threatening to invade an ally the United States is treaty-bound to defend has already served to undermine U.S. security through the alienation of its friends and allies. 

"The United States could spend trillions of dollars over a decade or more trying to field a system that would not work reliably, yet may well prompt a lose-lose arms race, where U.S. adversaries take lower cost steps to improve their capabilities to get through or evade the proposed system," said Dr. Grego. "The Golden Dome program was a foolhardy idea to start with, and Congress should work to rein in the administration before it does more damage."