WASHINGTON — Gen. Michael Guetlein on May 14 forcefully rejected a new Congressional Budget Office estimate that President Donald Trump’s proposed Golden Dome missile defense initiative could cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years, arguing the analysis relies on outdated assumptions and does not reflect the architecture the Pentagon is actually pursuing.
Guetlein spoke at the “Inside the Dome” conference hosted by Tectonic & Payload.
“They’re not estimating what we’re building,” he said of CBO, repeating a line he has used previously in response to outside cost estimates.
Golden Dome is Trump’s proposed missile defense system intended to integrate ground-, air- and space-based systems against ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missile threats.
The White House has publicly estimated the effort would cost roughly $185 billion. But the CBO report released this week concluded that a system broadly aligned with the president’s January 2025 executive order could cost about $1.2 trillion over two decades, with the bulk of that spending tied to space-based interceptors — thousands of spacecraft in low Earth orbit to maintain continuous missile defense coverage.
