“They did not estimate the architecture that we're building,” Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein said Thursday, disputing a Congressional Budget Office calculation that the Golden Dome missile-defense vision could cost about $1.2 trillion over two decades.
CBO's $1.2 trillion estimate
The Congressional Budget Office released a report that places the cost of Golden Dome at roughly $1.2 trillion over two decades. The report says that figure is based on the Golden Dome vision as described in a January 2025 executive order, and that CBO “used the language in the executive order as a guide to determine what components to include in its notional NMD [national missile defense] system.” The report stands in contrast to the cost figure cited by President Donald Trump in that same executive order — about $185 billion — and is larger than the nearly $80 billion the administration plans to spend in the Golden Dome for America account over the next five years.
Gen. Michael Guetlein and Golden Dome's defense
Gen. Michael Guetlein, the program leader, rejected the CBO’s approach at an Inside the Dome event in Washington, D.C., saying CBO relied on “outdated cost estimates for existing technology” and “did not estimate the architecture that we're building.” He added that CBO “didn't come and ask us what we're building,” and said the Golden Dome office has withheld details publicly because “the intelligence threat is so high.”
A Golden Dome spokesperson told reporters after Guetlein’s remarks that the general is looking for ways to reduce costs by using artificial intelligence and existing technology, but she declined to provide details. Guetlein also argued against projecting past costs forward, saying, “You can't just take what we've done in the past and multiply it forward, or you're going to get large numbers like CBO got.”
Congressional allies: Rep. Jeff Crank and Rep. Mark Messmer
Supporters in Congress pushed back on the CBO report. Rep. Jeff Crank, the head of the all-Republican Golden Dome Caucus, said the timing of the estimate was unfortunate and suggested opponents of Golden Dome would use the CBO findings for political leverage: “Some of the folks that are opposed to Golden Dome for whatever reason, for whatever political reason, they can continue to bury their heads in the sand…and they will use the CBO support as a wedge, as a tool, to say, hey, look, we can't afford this.”
Rep. Mark Messmer acknowledged politics as the program’s biggest threat but expressed optimism about bipartisan backing, saying, “It's unfortunate that, I mean, because it's the president's idea, we have people that object and fight it just because of that. But we've got to be consistent, we've got to continue to make the real threat deterrence that our country faces.”
Funding numbers — the near term and reconciliation
The story of Golden Dome's financing to date is concrete and partisan. The administration plans nearly $80 billion in the Golden Dome for America account over the next five years. Golden Dome secured $24 billion in Congressionally-approved reconciliation funds in last year’s budget, and the administration has requested another $17 billion through the same reconciliation process this year. The CBO’s two-decade estimate is described in the report as significantly larger than these near-term allocations. The program so far has been backed through reconciliation measures described in the reporting as “heavily partisan.”
How the Pentagon, the CBO, and congressional supporters are positioned
- Gen. Michael Guetlein and the Golden Dome office: Emphasize operational secrecy and dispute external cost projections. Guetlein acknowledged uncertainty about the program's long-term funding and scope, saying “it’s unclear what future funding and final size of the project will look like,” while asserting that system components will remain necessary for homeland security.
- The Congressional Budget Office: Produced a long-range cost estimate that uses the January 2025 executive order as its basis because, the report says, “DoD has not provided details about its objective architecture for GDA.” CBO officials declined to comment when asked whether they had reached out to Guetlein, the Pentagon, or the Golden Dome office while preparing the report.
- Congressional supporters: Led publicly by Rep. Jeff Crank and Rep. Mark Messmer, they criticized the estimate and framed opposition to Golden Dome as politically motivated. Their remarks underscore a push to continue funding through reconciliation and other congressional mechanisms.
Taken together, the public record in this reporting sets up a clear disconnect: a CBO two-decade price tag tied to an executive-order description of Golden Dome, and program leaders who say that description — and public cost baselines — do not reflect the undisclosed architecture they intend to build. Guetlein’s repeated emphasis on secrecy and the program’s near-term funding via reconciliation leave a narrow, politically charged window for the Pentagon, Congress, and CBO to reconcile competing accounts before future budget decisions. As Guetlein put it, “the threat is not going away,” even as the program’s scale and cost remain the subject of sharply different public estimates.
