Golden Dome estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years: CBO

The Golden Dome plan, which Trump announced last year, is designed to improve homeland defense against ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missile threats through a layered system of ground, air, and space-based sensors that detect, track, and intercept incoming projectiles.

The goal is for this system of systems to provide aerial defense for the entire United States, Alaska and Hawaii included.

With few details released publicly about the department’s planned strategy for the Golden Dome, the CBO’s new analysis, released on Tuesday, is based on “the cost of a notional [national missile defense] architecture based on the defense systems and capabilities that are called for” in Trump’s executive order titled “The Iron Dome for America.”

The $1.2 trillion price tag is the cost to build and operate the national missile defense system for 20 years.

The CBO’s estimate has the national missile defense system broken into four interceptor layers: one space-based layer, two wide-area