Pentagon fiscal ’27 budget aims to ‘operationalize’ Golden Dome
The $17.9 billion sought for Golden Dome in fiscal year 2027 would allow the Pentagon to “operationalize” the proposed missile defense shield, according to briefing materials released today.
This funding would also allow the Pentagon to hire 506 full-time, civilian employees “to support Golden Dome for America and accelerate homeland missile defense development,” according to budget documents released today by the U.S. Defense Department.
According to those documents, the Golden Dome funding is meant to strike “a deliberate balance between investments in disruptive, next-generation technologies while strengthening foundational capabilities, thereby simultaneously building future capabilities and improving near-term readiness.”
President Donald Trump has said the multilayered missile defense shield will be operational before his term ends in early 2029.
The budget proposal states that $17.1 billion of the Golden Dome funding would come from a planned reconciliation package, instead of through the normal appropriations process. The Pentagon said in a separate reconciliation document that it will use these funds to “create irreversible momentum for the GDA [Golden Dome for America] program, solidify the program’s foundation, and lock in progress on these complex, long-lead time efforts.”
Jules “Jay” Hurst III, the acting comptroller, told reporters at a Pentagon briefing today that, “in FY26, we began building Golden Dome by focusing on creating the infrastructure to build situational awareness and sense threats. In FY27, we will expand that sensing network and invest in next-generation interceptors.”
Golden Dome is one part of the nearly $1.5 trillion request, which if approved by Congress would be the largest defense budget in history.
Drones and autonomous technologies
Also on Tuesday, the Pentagon outlined its spending on drone and counter-drone capabilities. The fiscal 2027 request represents “the largest investment in drone warfare and space capabilities ever,” Hurst said.
The Pentagon requested $53.6 billion for drone efforts focused on contested logistics, collaborative autonomy, force generation, counter autonomous systems and asset purchases/industrial demand signal, according to slides shown to reporters.
According to the slides, another $20.6 billion would go toward “other autonomous and remotely operated systems,” such as one-way attack drones and counter-small unmanned autonomous systems; the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program; and the Navy’s MQ-25 drone.
Combined, “that $70 billion is all going into existing systems and technologies,” Hurst said.
As part of this drone push, the Pentagon’s Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, dubbed DAWG, would see a dramatic surge in its funding: $226 million in fiscal 2026 to $54.6 billion in fiscal 2027.
“I think of the DAWG as a pathfinder,” Hurst said. “They’re out there finding the best technology for us and working on integration. They’re with these companies, live right now, testing different systems and orchestration tools for autonomy, and they’re giving them live feedback. So it’s a very agile process.”
Space Force
The proposed budget seeks just over $71 billion for the Space Force, up from the $31.6 billion officials said was received in fiscal 2026. The largest increase is in the service’s research, development, test and evaluation funding, followed by its procurement budget.
The budget would invest $1.6 billion in space domain awareness, $6.8 billion in missile warning and missile tracking infrastructure in low- and medium-Earth orbits, and $1.1 billion in space-based moving target indicators.
Additionally, the budget would fund 31 launches in fiscal 2027 — nine for the Space Development Agency and 22 for the National Security Space Launch program.
Other next-generation technologies
The Pentagon also requested continued or increased investment in a variety of next-generation aerospace efforts across the services.
The Army’s tiltrotor aircraft MV-75 Cheyenne II, formerly known as the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, would receive $2.2 billion in funding “specifically seeking efforts in prototyping, testing and production planning,” Hurst said.
The Air Force’s F-47 stealth fighter would receive about $5 billion in development funds, according to the briefing slides. The planned B-21 Raider bomber would receive $6.1 billion. The E-4C, or Survivable Airborne Operations Center, would get $2.2 billion in development funds.
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Additionally, the Air Force’s Sentinel ICBM program would receive $4.6 billion and its Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile effort would get $1.2 billion.
Challenges ahead
Hurst acknowledged this spending plan faces two potential hurdles: whether Congress passes the reconciliation funding package, and whether the department can spend the requested funds.
The proposed budget seeks $1.1 trillion through the normal appropriations process and an additional $350 billion through the reconciliation package. Hurst said the Pentagon has used the reconciliation process “for things that were kind of a one-time plus-up,” as well as for programs “when there’s technology that’s changing quickly, like for Golden Dome or for the DAWG.”
Asked about the possibility of not receiving that additional funding, Hurst said “we wouldn’t ask for the money if we didn’t want it. So we’ll go back to the White House, and we’ll work with Congress to come up a new strategy if the White House and Congress decide reconciliation is not the right vehicle.”
Hurst also said “one of the major challenges of this budget is to be able to obligate dollars in a timely manner because it’s such a large increase.”
“But we haven’t been taking away workforce from areas that are involved in critical efforts like the DAWG or space acquisition, which is where a lot of this money goes,” he added.
