U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a news conference in Panama City, on April 9, 2025. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. Space Command said April 9 that it has finalized options for the “Golden Dome” missile defense system and has sent its recommendations to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his review and approval. The futuristic system was ordered by President Donald Trump during his first week in office and, if successful, would mark the first time the U.S. places weapons in space that are meant to destroy ground-based missiles within seconds of launch.
In his January executive order, Trump gave the military 60 days to provide him recommendations on what an overall system would look like. Recent developments in hypersonics — and in particular China’s 2021 groundbreaking launch of a warhead system that went into orbit before reentering Earth’s atmosphere — have prompted calls by the U.S. military to develop additional ways to defend against missile strikes.
“It’s time that we can clearly say that we need space fires and we need weapons systems. We need orbital interceptors,” Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command, said in a speech kicking off the annual Space Symposium, an industry event held in early April in Colorado. “We call these weapons, and we need them to deter a space conflict and to be successful if we end up in such a fight.”
Multiple options were developed, vetted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and provided to Hegseth, said Col. Matthew Wroten, Space Command’s head of global warfare requirements. He didn’t give details on what those options look like.
The Defense Department said it would deliver options to Trump in line with his executive order. Space Command has not said how much it anticipates a space-based defense will cost, but Wroten said the options sent to Hegseth incorporated estimated costs. In early April, Trump said his 2026 defense budget proposal will near $1 trillion.
The program was previously known as Iron Dome but was renamed by the Pentagon in February to Golden Dome for America. Wroten said Space Command is now moving forward on developing specific requirements for Golden Dome. Those requirements will be used to weigh what capabilities and — importantly for defense firms attending the space conference — what commercially available technologies the military will pursue to get an initial system fielded within a few years.
The administration has said Golden Dome will incorporate existing missile defense systems and new space-based capabilities to form a multilayered defense. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan proposed a similar space-based defense, but the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as “Star Wars,” ultimately did not come to fruition because of technology and cost challenges.