Pentagon discredits massive $1.2 trillion estimation for Trump's missile shield

A senior Pentagon official overseeing the "Golden Dome" project has pushed back against estimates voiced by a congressional group suggesting the proposed US missile shield could ultimately cost a whopping $1.2 trillion, accusing these analysts of relying on outdated assumptions and obsolete technology models.

Gen. Michael Guetlein responded to newly published projections from the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated that developing, deploying and operating a missile defence system similar to the one proposed by US President Donald Trump could cost up to $1.2 trillion over a 20-year period, as Breaking Defence reports.

“They’re not estimating what we’re building. It’s as simple as that,” Guetlein argued. “They’re not necessarily wrong, but they take legacy capabilities, they take technology from the two early 2000-2004 reports, etc., and then they just multiply that forward by the geography of the [homeland].”

His comments came during the “Inside the Dome” conference hosted by Tectonic & Payload in Washington on May 14.

Just last month, Guetlein offered lawmakers a dramatically lower estimate for the program, suggesting the Golden Dome project could cost roughly $185 billion.

At the conference, the general argued that the type of architecture modelled by the Congressional Budget Office would be financially "unaffordable".

“If I cannot do something affordably and scalably, it doesn’t make sense as a nation to go after it, because I cannot bankrupt the nation,” he said.

Guetlein argued that the CBO based its calculations on “exquisite” and highly manpower-dependent technologies designed for overseas or point-defence operations rather than large-scale homeland defence.

“That is not what we need for the homeland. You need a regional defence with a different architecture,” he stressed.

According to the CBO report, more than $1 trillion of the projected costs would stem from acquisition expenses, including interceptor systems and a space-based missile warning and tracking network.

“The most expensive component is the space-based interceptor layer, which accounts for about 70 per cent of acquisition costs and 60 per cent of total costs,” the report stated.

Guetlein, however, argued that the estimates for space-based interceptors failed to account for major technological advances made over the past two decades.

He reiterated his belief that space-based interceptors are technically feasible, pointing to previous congressional testimony in which he argued that all the underlying technologies required for the system already exist.

The Pentagon official said the military has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to manoeuvre objects in space and guide them back into Earth’s atmosphere. The primary challenge, he acknowledged, lies in integrating those separate capabilities into a single operational weapons system — a task whose final cost remains uncertain.

Still, Guetlein repeated earlier testimony before the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, saying the Defence Department would abandon the space-based interceptor concept if it proved prohibitively expensive, while also expressing confidence that costs could remain manageable.

By Nazrin Sadigova