President Donald Trump’s plan to build a missile defense system is not going so well. Indeed, it seems stalled out at the “concepts of a plan” stage.
The “One Big, Beautiful Bill” designated $25 billion to begin development on Golden Dome, which almost certainly will not work because even if the technology challenges could be overcome, scaling to the point where it would provide protection is wildly unlikely.
So things remain stalled out, with the administration not even having a spending plan for how it will allocate the initial $25 billion. You’d think this administration, in particular, would be quite capable of pissing away $25 billion, but it turns out that that’s enough money that really does require a plan.
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
It’s tempting to blame the government shutdown for the slowdown here, and that’s definitely a factor. However, it wasn’t an October slowdown that made the Defense Department miss its August deadline to get a spending plan to Congress.
Because this is Trump, he seems to be trying to do this on the cheap, foisting costs for the development of space-based interceptors—four different versions, to be precise—onto private contractors.
But a defense contractor executive told Reuters that they might not even bother competing for the right to build these because they won’t want to shoulder the costs—not to mention a subsequent administration might just kill the program.
Costs for this sort of thing are usually borne by the government, but apparently not this time. Though, come to think of it, this seems kind of weird given that the government now seems to be made up of giant companies bribing Trump in exchange for government contracts. Maybe someone just hasn’t offered Trump enough yet.
Well, it’s one space-based interceptor. How much could it cost?
Anywhere from $200 million to $2 billion, which is such a huge cost span as to be meaningless. Basically, we need to strap rockets or frickin’ lasers or some other technology onto satellites so they can intercept enemy missiles. And we would ultimately need thousands, if not tens of thousands, of the things.
Elon Musk stands beside President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
One estimate found that we would need 9,500 interceptors to defend against 10 enemy missiles. Another pegged it at 16,000.
This thing is such a clear giveaway that it isn’t at all surprising that even the first steps in the process are going awry. Trump has been promising that this would come in around $175 billion, but that number seems plucked from thin air.
It’s nonsensical to think about budgeting for something where the range of costs goes from $161 billion to $542 billion, while some estimates say it would actually cost several trillion dollars.
If Trump and Elon Musk hadn’t temporarily broken up, Musk would probably be in charge of this thing, overpromising and underdelivering just like he does with all of his projects.
Instead, a patchwork of big-tech types will have to compete—or not, perhaps, as no one seems to be all that eager to be dragged down with this thing.
