A version of this commentary originally appeared in the American Foreign Policy Council Defense Dossier on June 3.
President Donald Trump’s January “Iron Dome for America” executive order and subsequent planning for the Golden Dome architecture mark a significant expansion of American missile defense policy. Gen. Michael Gutlein, vice chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force, compared the scale of the Golden Dome to the Manhattan Project, requiring a whole-of-government effort. This is not, however, the first time a Trump administration has set lofty goals for its missile defense policy. Yet previous attempts to invigorate U.S. missile defense fell short in part due to the lack of funding to support them.
Fundamentally, budgets are about prioritization. Because resources are finite, spending must be prioritized and, where priorities conflict, trade-offs are required. Understanding these tradeoffs when planning the Golden Dome architecture will help the administration better scope its efforts.
Three levels of decision-making or prioritization stand out as having influence over the budget for Golden Dome: within the missile defense portfolio, in the overall Department of Defense (DOD) capability mix, and across the broader federal budget. The most expansive concepts for the Golden Dome architecture will require making aligned prioritization decisions across all three levels.
Analyzing the Golden Dome resourcing challenge begins with understanding the size and makeup of the current air and missile defense portfolio. Since 2009, DOD spending on air and missile defense modernization has averaged a little over $20 billion per year (Figure 1). Because air and missile defense programs do not have their own spending title, this figure requires a manual aggregation of program lines into an estimate of overall modernization spending. Since 2018, average spending has been over $25 billion, with most of that growth coming from increased Army and Space Force funding.
