The price of America’s missile defense dome has become an open war of numbers between the agency that scores federal costs and the general building the system.
David Mosher, head of the Congressional Budget Office’s national security division, defended the office’s estimate that Golden Dome could cost at least $1.2T over 20 years. The next day, Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, the project’s four-star program manager, called such figures an uninformed “myth” during a stop in North Dakota.
“They’re not estimating what we’re building,” Guetlein said. The Pentagon projects roughly $185B to deploy the network over the next decade.
Mosher acknowledged his team estimated the January 2025 executive order for an “Iron Dome for America” using current systems such as Patriot batteries and Aegis Ashore, because the Golden Dome program office has refused to meet with CBO analysts. “I know nothing about what they’re actually building,” he said at a Brookings Institution event.
Congress gave the program $22.5B in March, and Guetlein said more than 90 percent of that is already obligated. The dome is meant to link existing sensors and weapons and add new space-based interceptors, though how such defenses would be distributed remains unclear.
The clash underscores how the administration’s highest-priority defense project is still being defined in public by cost guesses rather than a settled plan.
