Trump’s Missile Defense Shield Hanging On By Budget Thread

FORT STORY, Va. – Top Pentagon officials gathered Thursday in a hangar at a Navy base here surrounded by air defense hardware to declare that President Donald Trump's hugely ambitious Golden Dome homeland air defense effort was moving forward.

But that is an increasingly hard sell.

Gen. Mike Guetlein, the man leading the effort for the Pentagon, touted the progress made over the past 10 months and pledged to get the first key piece of sensor technology up and running by 2028 — a timeline that needs an alarmingly large number of things to go right in short order.

Trump’s signature missile defense shield faces technical hurdles, funding questions and — perhaps most problematically — a Republican Congress that seems increasingly unlikely to provide the program with the tens of billions it needs to fully get off the ground.

The Trump administration envisions funding the program next year almost entirely through a party-line reconciliation bill. But top Republicans are already sounding skeptical, given GOP reluctance to embrace a bruising congressional budget battle ahead of this year’s high-stakes midterm elections.

“Is [reconciliation] the most efficient, effective way to spend money?” House Appropriations defense subcommittee chair Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif), said in an interview. “In my mind, no.”

Trump intends the initiative to protect the entire country from a variety of threats, including ballistic missiles fired thousands of miles away to small drones flying toward the U.S. It would use a mix of old and new systems tied together by an artificial intelligence-powered network pushing information back and forth in real time, a challenging engineering feat. And parts of it need to be fully functional by 2028 to meet Trump’s timelines.

The Pentagon wants $17 billion in budget reconciliation funds for Golden Dome, and they’re only asking for $400 million through the regular appropriations process. The system could cost anywhere between $185 billion to $3 trillion.

But it’s risky to expect the reconciliation measure will go anywhere, said a former defense official. That means Golden Dome money will have to compete with the rest of the Pentagon’s wish list in regular congressional spending bills.

Aiming for a potential reconciliation bill, is “not great signaling by this White House about the supposedly drastic need for Golden Dome,” said the former official, who, like some others in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive budget issues.

The Pentagon remains confident.

“To the skeptics, let me say this,” Guetlein said Thursday. “Golden Dome is achievable. It is not a single point failure.” Its intent is to “strengthen global stability by creating profound doubt in the adversary's mind. They will not win.”

Guetlein, when asked Thursday to explain how the administration plans to spend those billions, said much of the program will incorporate currently classified technologies. He declined to say what that entailed.

“I cannot tell you exactly where the money's going,” he said, adding that it will be layered between systems on land, air and space. “We're actually buying hardware. We are not doing prototypes.”

The first new piece of that technological puzzle is already being tested.

An unremarkable triangle of wires and poles sits in the middle of a field on the base where Guetlein spoke. Despite its humdrum appearance, the Army’s Long-Range Persistent Surveillance system is up and running, with a 360-degree sensor system designed to detect cruise missiles, drones, and aircraft.

The equipment is collecting data in the airspace surrounding the base. This marks the first time it’s been used domestically.

But some lawmakers have been frustrated by the lack of interaction with the administration, which could prove problematic if the Pentagon needs to work with Congress to shift Golden Dome money around.

While there has been some communication, it hasn’t “reached the level of detailed spending plans,” said Rep. George Whitesides (D-Calif.), who sits on the House Armed Services subcommittee that oversees Golden Dome.

“I'm okay with not pouring a ton of money out the door without having a pretty cohesive view of what it should do,” he said.

To top it off, Guetlein recently said that a centerpiece of Trump’s plan may be too costly. He warned lawmakers on April 15 that space-based interceptors, which are intended to destroy missiles just a few minutes after launch, could end up on the cutting room floor.

“We are so focused on affordability.” Guetlein told the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee. "If we cannot do it affordably, we will not go into production.”

Golden Dome received about $23 billion last year through a reconciliation package passed in the summer. But that funding faced delays, frustrating defense companies eyeing lucrative contracts.

The reconciliation process was a “new animal,” and both the Pentagon and Congress had to figure out how that money would actually flow, said Jeff Hanke, president of space systems at L3Harris, a defense contractor.

Industry “would have loved to [have] gone faster,” Hanke said. “We just have to continue to work with them, share with them, help them go as fast as they can go.”

If Congress chooses the reconciliation route a second time — which is still very uncertain — Hanke said he expects it will be a smoother ride.

The White House plans to move Golden Dome funding into the base budget after 2027 and not rely on the reconciliation process. The effort, according to OMB budget documents, would be funded in the “Golden Dome for America Fund” program line, allocating $14.7 billion in 2028, $15 billion in 2029, $16 billion in 2030, and $15.8 billion in 2031.

But for now, the fate of the project rests on a GOP Congress wary of reconciliation. And top Pentagon officials are already thinking of other options.

“We'll go back to the White House and we'll work with Congress to come up with a new strategy if the White House and Congress decide reconciliation is not the right [path],” Jules Hurst,the acting Pentagon comptroller, told reporters this week.

Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.