The Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile shield has spent most of its first $22.5 billion. It doesn’t have a dime lined up for what comes next.
Fiscal 2027 started Oct. 1 under a stopgap spending bill, and that bill does nothing for Golden Dome. Stopgaps keep programs running at last year’s appropriated level. Golden Dome never had one. Its money came from the 2025 reconciliation law, not the regular defense budget.
Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, who runs the program, saw this coming. “A CR doesn’t help me at Golden Dome because I don’t have a topline to fall back on,” he told reporters in Huntsville, Alabama, in August, Payload reported. Without new money, he said, “there is no Golden Dome because there is no funding.”
The money so far
Congress set aside $24.4 billion for air and missile defense in the reconciliation law, according to the Congressional Research Service. Guetlein’s office got $22.5 billion of it in March. The rest went straight to the services.
By mid-August, about 90% had been put on contract, Guetlein said, as reported by Aerospace America. That’s roughly $20 billion for radars, space-based interceptors, other interceptors and the sites to put them on. That money keeps flowing; the 2025 funds don’t expire until Sept. 30, 2029.
The problem is the next round. The administration asked for $17.5 billion for 2027. All but about $400 million of it depends on a second reconciliation bill that hasn’t gone anywhere. The $400 million that went through the normal budget process cleared the House and Senate Armed Services committees and House appropriators. The rest is stuck.
Senators: put it in the budget
At a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing Sept. 29, members of both parties said they like the idea of Golden Dome and hate how it’s been paid for.
“We need to get back to a bipartisan approach to this as soon as possible,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., who wants the program in the regular appropriations bill.
Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, called it one of the “most expensive and important initiatives of this government” and said skipping the appropriations process was “very bothersome.”
Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., pointed out that a layered homeland missile defense was written into the 2024 defense policy bill her committee drafted. “So, it came from us,” she said.
Tom Karako, who runs the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the panel the name might be part of the problem. He floated renaming the program so it’s less tied to one party, and suggested folding it into the Missile Defense Agency rather than building a new permanent office.
A test nobody can check
Guetlein says the work is paying off. In a test in late July, he said, the team “shot down everything that we put in the air in a matter of 34 minutes.” He wouldn’t say what was tested or what the targets were.
He’s sticking to the timeline, too: operational by “the summer of 2028, as we promised.” President Donald Trump has said it’ll be up before he leaves office in early 2029.
The total bill keeps growing. Trump put it at $175 billion when he unveiled the plan in May 2025. The Pentagon’s current estimate is about $185 billion, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported.
What happens Dec. 11
That’s when the current stopgap runs out. Lawmakers can pass full-year spending bills, extend the stopgap or carve out a special exception, called an anomaly, to give Golden Dome money to work with in the meantime. No anomaly made it into the current bill.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is already fielding smaller defenses against cheaper threats, like the lasers and microwave weapons headed to five U.S. bases to knock down drones. Golden Dome is supposed to handle the big stuff: ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles aimed at the homeland.
Guetlein, for his part, insists what’s been bought will work. The capabilities on contract, he said, “are going to absolutely be effective against the threat.”
Sources and further reading
- Payload: Guetlein says a CR could stop Golden Dome
- Aerospace America: Golden Dome funding is 90% obligated
- Air & Space Forces Magazine: Lawmakers push for bipartisan fix
- Defense-Aerospace.com: Golden Dome FY2027 request
- Breaking Defense: If funding falters, there is no Golden Dome
Featured image: U.S. Space Force SLD 30 photo by Senior Airman Tiarra Sibley / Wikimedia Commons, public domain (cropped)
