By Lt Gen Kapil Aggarwal (Retd)
The US President had, earlier this year on 27 January 2025, signed an Executive order for development of a “Golden Dome” missile defence system. It is meant to be a very ambitious program comprising thousands of space based weapons or interceptors, distributed around the earth, intended to shield the US from long range and hypersonic missile threats. The system would employ a global constellation of satellites equipped with both sensors and space-based interceptors. For the first time in history, weapons are likely to be orbiting in space, marking the opening of a new frontier. On 20 May 2025, President Donald Trump announced the $175 billion project slated to be completed by end of his term in early 2029.
The title “Golden Dome” appears to draw inspiration from “Iron Dome” air defence system deployed by Israel, which saw extensive employment during multiple skirmishes with Iran in the year 2025, including the ongoing one in June 2025. However, the Golden Dome system is a space based shield and is much wider in scope having offensive capabilities also. It will cover much larger territory and be capable of defeating even hypersonic missiles.
Need for a Space Based System
The current missile defense systems have limited capability against higher end ballistic threats, as also novel hypersonic ones, employing a relatively small number of land based interceptors tied to larger sensor and communications networks. Middle East has long been a laboratory for testing these multi-layered air defence systems developed by Israel or by Israel in collaboration with US. These have been repeatedly employed, post the 07 October 2023 attack on Israel, warding off multiple attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, using mix of short and medium range rockets, drones and long range ballistic missiles. Although the layered missile defence system employed by Israel has acquitted itself well, yet it has not been found foolproof and there are some cracks and voids which deserve to be liquidated.
The Iron Dome is designed to intercept short-range rockets and artillery shells upto about 70 Kms range. Since it was deployed over a decade ago, it has intercepted thousands of rockets, with a reported success rate exceeding 90%. Another system is David’s Sling, a US-Israel collaboration, which targets medium-range threats, upto about 300 Kms range, such as those posed by Hezbollah in Lebanon. It has also been deployed multiple times during the ongoing Middle East exchanges. The Arrow System, developed by Israel jointly with the US, is a high-altitude defense system designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles outside the Earth’s atmosphere, upto about 2400 Kms range. It has been used to target missiles fired by Houthi militants from Yemen during the ongoing conflict.
The limitation of earth based air defense systems and radars is that their detection ranges for warding off an airborne attack are limited to a few hundred kilometres. Most of the existing configurations are multilayered air defence systems integrated into a dynamic command and control structure capable of real time responses through surface to air missiles and other air defence elements. As stated, these terrestrial systems may still not be capable of thwarting attacks from supersonic and hypersonic missiles. The recent Operation Sindoor also offers a case study where the Chinese HQ 9 Air Defence systems, deployed by Pakistan, failed to neutralize the supersonic Brahmos missile attacks. On the other hand, the Integrated Air Command and Control System of the Indian Air Force alongwith Akashteer system of the Army, provided an integrated Air Situation Picture and managed to intercept and neutralize most air borne threats from Pakistan, including swarm of drones, loitering munitions, missiles etc. However, there is still a requirement of surveillance from another domain (Space) for real time detection and neutralization of threats from Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles and Hypersonic Cruise Missiles.
Architecture of the Golden Dome System
The Golden Dome system aims to be an operationally-proven, layered missile defense system which allows Commanders to make synchronized decisions about threats at any range, in any phase of flight, from any location in the world. It will be the first system to integrate all air defence assets across domains, including space, with much wider scope than the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow systems. The Executive order of the President US called for the architecture to include plans for the following eight components at minimum:-
- Defense against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and next-generation aerial attacks
- Acceleration of the deployment of the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor layer
- Development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors capable of boost-phase intercept
- Deployment of terminal-phase intercept capabilities to defeat countervalue attacks (Glide Phase Interceptors (GPIs))
- Deployment of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA)’s Custody Layer
- Deployment of capabilities to defeat missile attacks prior to launch (“left of launch” preemptive strike capabilities)
- Deployment of a secure supply chain for all components
- Deployment of non-kinetic capabilities to augment kinetic attacks
The Executive order declares “The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States”. It is evident from the Executive order that the US Golden Dome is quite different from Israeli Iron Dome despite the shared name. The Iron Dome system is designed primarily to defend against lower-end and localized threats like artillery rockets and mortar shells, with some capability against drones and cruise missiles. On the other hand, weaponization of space is the key to Golden Dome vision of Missile Defense Shield.
The number of satellites in low earth orbit that would be needed by the Golden Dome system for providing a worldwide shield will be more than 500, given that each such satellite has a time span of just 15 minutes approx over a particular spot. Some experts estimate that for foolproof coverage, the number of satellites required will be much higher; bigger than any constellation that’s ever been launched, more than the 7000 Starlink satellites operated by SpaceX, currently. It is also estimated by them that this kind of Golden Dome system, even if it works, would take at least a decade to build, cost more than half a trillion dollars and accelerate the global nuclear arms race and the weaponisation of space.
Financial Implications
On 20 May 2025, the US President announced that his administration has approved an “architecture” for Golden Dome and expects the system to be completed within three years at a cost of $175 billion. He also alluded to the former President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), popularly known as “Star Wars,” which proposed similar capabilities in the 1980s but was never fully realized and declared that the missile threat to the homeland US will be forever ended. He asserted that “Hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles and advanced cruise missiles, all of them will be knocked out of the air,”
A down payment of $25 billion for Golden Dome was included in a Republican “reconciliation” spending bill that would add $150 billion to the Pentagon’s budget in fiscal year 2025. However, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Golden Dome could cost between $161 billion and $542 billion over 20 years. Some Republican Senators, involved in the program, have even predicted the end cost would be “trillions of dollars.
Independent observers like Shashank Joshi, Defence editor at the Economist, said that “while the US military would take the plan very seriously, it was unrealistic to think the system would be completed during Trump’s term, and that its cost would take up a large part of the defense budget”. Thus, the jury is still out on this considering the past experience of SDI, which was brought to a close in 1993 after spending approx $30 billion.
Potential to Escalate Global Arms Race
There is already an ongoing arms race between the US, China and Russia, with all three countries modernising and expanding their nuclear arsenals, as well as developing space-based systems to support their militaries. PresidentTrump’s announcement that the Golden Dome carries “strong offensive implications” raises the risks of an arms race in space. To counter this system, China and Russia might try to destroy or disable US satellites. Both countries already have missiles capable of shooting down satellites, and they could also try to electronically jam or hack US satellite systems. These countries could also bulk up their missile arsenals and possibly develop more manoeuvrable weapons that also use decoys. Russia has already started developing weapons less vulnerable to space based interception, such as intercontinental nuclear torpedoes that travel underwater.
On 21 May 2025, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning criticized the Golden Dome plan, claiming it “violates the principle of peaceful use of space in the Outer Space Treaty”. She called on the US to “give up developing and deploying a global anti-missile system” which risked “turning space into a war zone.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said “the United States Golden Dome project undermines the foundations of strategic stability as it involves the creation of a global missile defense system.” On 8 May 2025, China and Russia made a joint statement criticizing the proposal’s rejection of the “inseparable interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms”, its “left-of-launch” capabilities, and its “orbital deployment of interception systems”
On 27 May 2025, North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized the proposal as representing “an outer space nuclear war scenario”. It denounced “undisguised moves for space militarization” and argued regional stability requires “the symmetry of the matchless power”.
Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations compared U.S. President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome to a protection racket after US President said America’s northern neighbor must either pay $61 billion to join the program or could agree to annexation (in which case inclusion would be free).
Patrycja Bazylczyk, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the Golden Dome signaled a reorientation of US missile defense policy towards countering Russia and China, versus existing systems geared towards North Korea. The Arms Control Association notes that Moscow has been working to ensure it can overcome the threat of a future U.S. space-based interceptor network by developing anti-satellite weapons, undersea torpedoes, hypersonic glide vehicles, and a nuclear-powered cruise missiles. Beijing, meanwhile, may respond by increasing its nuclear-armed ballistic missile force.
Conclusion
The Golden Dome program represents one of the most ambitious missile defense initiatives in US history. The system aims to use a combination of space-based sensors, ground-based interceptors, missile interceptors in space and advanced command-and-control networks to detect, track, and destroy incoming missiles before they can reach targets within the United States. The Golden Dome would supposedly use space-based interceptor missiles in low Earth orbit, an unprecedented technological feat that has never been demonstrated before. Trump’s claim that the Golden Dome would defend against missile strikes from the other side of the world or even from space implies it would require a dense constellation of likely low Earth orbiting satellites and space-based missile interceptors that could deorbit and strike a missile within minutes of it launching.
Golden Dome, the next generation missile shield, still in conceptual stage, has already triggered strong reactions from adversaries of the US. Its high cost and logistical complexity makes the mission extremely challenging, incredibly complicated and a costly proposition. The Golden Dome also revives memories of Ronald Reagan’s SDI, which was also envisioned as an array of ground and space based anti-missile capabilities, paired with new sensors and communication networks. Unlike the fate of SDI, Golden Dome may successfully fructify but at what cost and in which time frame would be an interesting conundrum.
End Notes
Trevithick, Joseph (January 28, 2025). “Weaponizing Space Key To Trump’s Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield Vision”. The War Zone.
“Trump unveils plans for ‘Golden Dome’ defense system”. BBC. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
Debusmann Jr, Bernd (May 23, 2025). “Can Donald Trump build the ‘Golden Dome’ over the US?”. BBC News. Retrieved May 24, 2025.
“Golden Dome: Doubling Down on a Strategic Blunder”. Arms Control Association. May 20, 2025. Retrieved May 29, 2025.
“Anti-missile system intensifies US-China nuclear competition”. Asia Times. Retrieved May 27, 2025.
“Remarks on United States Missile Defense Policy at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia”. The American Presidency Project. January 17, 2019. Retrieved June 4, 2025.
“Russia says U.S. Golden Dome project undermines strategic stability”. Reuters. May 27, 2025. Retrieved May 29, 2025.
“Joint statement by the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on Global Strategic Stability”. Kremlin. Retrieved May 27, 2025.
Boram, Park (May 27, 2025). “N. Korea blasts U.S. Golden Dome missile defense plan as ‘space nuclear war scenario'”. Yonhap News Agency. Retrieved May 27, 2025.
[The article was first published in The News Analytics Herald]
AVM Rajiv Gandotra
Golden dome will certainly be a landmark in technological advancement towards air defence and counter combat systems. While it’ll certainly trigger technological supremacy race, it’s capacity and saturation limits will need a close watch. DRDO needs to take closer look and endeavor to have appropriate indigenous options for potential and obvious adversaries.
Certainly a great insight by General Aggarwal