--- title: "Trump’s $175 Billion Golden Dome is Turning Into a Disaster" description: "Space Force General Michael Guetlein says the blueprint is complete, but didn't give any details about its scope, timeline, or cost." date: "2025-09-19" modified: "2025-09-19" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/trump-golden-dome-disaster" categories: - "Military" - "Science & Energy" - "Space" tags: - "donald trump" - "missiles" - "national security" --- # Trump’s $175 Billion Golden Dome is Turning Into a Disaster ![Space Force General Michael Guetlein says the blueprint is complete, but didn't give any details about its scope, timeline, or cost.]() *\Image: Chip Somodevilla / Getty\* Months after US president Donald Trump signed off on a long-range missile defense system called the "Golden Dome," officials and the public are still in the dark on how to finish the project — and experts warn its price tag will be far higher than previously disclosed. After being given a [60-day deadline]() to come up with a plan for the project, Space Force General Michael Guetlein said the blueprint is complete — but wasn't able to give any details about the scope, timeline, or cost, [*Bloomberg* reports](). "It is currently undergoing review and no additional information is available at this time, keeping operational security top of mind," the Pentagon told *Bloomberg* in a statement, going back on Guetlein's pledge to share his plan at the deadline. The ludicrous project is imagined as a constellation of hundreds of space-based ballistic missile interceptors at a cost of $175 billion to defend the United States from theoretical nuclear strikes. If all goes well, it'll be [online by 2028]() — or at least, that's what the Trump administration says. Even its already grossly inflated price tag is probably optimistic thinking. Last week, analysts for the American Enterprise Institute [released a study]() pegging the system somewhere between $252 billion and $3.6 trillion over the next 20 years. The non-partisan [Congressional Budget Office](), meanwhile, estimates a cost between $542 and $831 billion. Where exactly the price tag lands depends on Guetlein's yet-to-be-released blueprints. As AEI senior researcher [Todd Harrison put it](), "as long as its requirements are undefined, Golden Dome can cost as much or as little as policymakers are willing to spend." But cost isn't the only issue gnawing at architects of the Golden Dome: there's also the small fact that no one has come even remotely close to pulling something like this off. That's because ballistic missile interception is impossibly difficult. Since Ronald Regan's equally hare-brained "[Star Wars]()" program, the US has spent an estimated $400 billion on antimissile defense systems (funding which [Trump froze](), bizarrely enough.) The result, as [*Slate* noted](), was that in over four decades of research, nuclear technicians have successfully knocked one single dummy warhead out of the sky — an incredible feat in its own right, but one accomplished under [extremely generous]() test conditions. With a near-limitless price tag and one of the most complicated feats of [aerospace engineering]() ever conceived, it's more likely this ends up like Trump's other infrastructure pipe dreams: a half-baked pile of private-sector busywork that'll never achieve liftoff. **More on national security:** [*An Unknown Entity Has Voice Cloned the Secretary of State and Is Calling High Level Officials*]() ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()