Pentagon’s space defence ambitions may hit $542 billion price tag

The US may need to spend as much as $542 billion over the next two decades to develop and deploy a space-based missile defence system.

The figure represents a rough estimate for one of the most ambitious and untested elements of President Donald Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” defence initiative, Caliber.Az reports via foreign media. 

The report, prepared for a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, outlines potential costs for a network of space-based interceptors (SBI), with a lower-end estimate of $161 billion. The final price tag, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) notes, would depend heavily on launch costs and the total number of interceptors deployed into orbit.

The assessment builds upon previous evaluations by both the CBO and the National Research Council, which had examined the feasibility of defending against intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threats from adversaries such as North Korea. However, the CBO emphasised that these latest estimates are tentative due to the experimental nature of the technology. Trump’s “Golden Dome” plan echoes the Cold War-era “Star Wars” initiative of President Ronald Reagan, which also envisioned a space-based missile shield but was ultimately never implemented. 

“Although launch costs are lower now, threats and US policies have changed since those studies were published in ways that could increase the overall size and cost of an SBI constellation,” says the seven-page report, described as the first authoritative independent government review of the Golden Dome vision. As of now, the White House and Pentagon have not released any official details on the architecture or scope of the proposed system. 

The report cites two key developments driving the potential increase in cost: North Korea’s expanding and increasingly sophisticated ICBM capabilities, and the evolving military strategies of Russia and China. 

“Such a defence could require a more expansive SBI capability than the systems examined in the previous studies” and “quantifying those recent changes will require further analysis, which CBO is undertaking,” the report says. 

According to the CBO, in order to effectively counter ICBMs from nuclear-armed powers such as Russia and China, the interceptor satellites under Golden Dome would “need to be much bigger — and therefore more costly — than the constellations in the previous studies,” due to the likelihood of advanced countermeasures such as anti-satellite weapons. 

The report underscores the strategic and financial complexity of moving missile defence into orbit—reviving a debate about the viability, risks, and costs of weaponising space in an increasingly contested geopolitical environment.

By Naila Huseynova