The Pentagon official overseeing the Trump administration’s planned multilayered missile defense shield said today “we’ve obligated about 90%” of the $22.5 billion he said the initiative has received.
Gen. Michael Guetlein, Golden Dome’s program manager, said at an event in Medora, North Dakota, that his office received $22.5 billion from Congress in March. Congress allocated $24.4 billion for Golden Dome in fiscal year 2026 through the Trump administration’s sprawling tax and spending package signed last summer.
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), also speaking at the event, noted he thought the program had received closer to $25 billion; Guetlein did not address the topic further.
Guetlein said today his office “did not receive any funding to get after this [initiative] until March of this year.” Now, “we have radars on contract; we have space-based interceptors on contract; we have interceptors on contract; we have sites on contract.”
Speaking to reporters last week at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, Guetlein warned that “without continued funding” after the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, “Golden Dome will stop with everything we’ve already built and delivered.”
President Donald Trump has said Golden Dome will be operational before his term ends in early 2029, and Guetlein said today the initiative is on schedule for “the summer of 2028, as we promised.”
Guetlein also provided additional details on a recent Golden Dome test.
“We took what we believe is our architecture and took real hardware into a test about three or four weeks ago,” he said. “Out of that test, we shot down everything that we put in the air in a matter of 34 minutes.”
He added that he “can’t talk more about that — about what kit we used and what targets we went against — but we proved that the capabilities that we are buying with that $22.5 billion that Congress gave us are going to absolutely be effective against the threat.”
Guetlein continued: “The technology that I am pursuing under Golden Dome is not next-generational. There will be some [new] aspects that we’re going to bring to bear, but to rapidly change the homeland defense equation is utilizing the kit that we already have in our arsenal.”
