The budget office estimates that Trump’s proposed Golden Dome will cost a trillion-dollars over a 20-year period.
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US President Donald Trump’s plan to put weapons in space – billed as the “Golden Dome for America” missile defense program – is estimated to cost $1.2 trillion US over a 20-year period, according to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, a sum worse than the initial US $175 billion tag he gave last year.
The non-partisan CBO report, published Tuesday, is described as an analysis that shows “one way that reflects rather than a measure of a particular Administration proposal.”
The plan for the future was ordered by Trump in an executive order during his first week in office, in his current term as president. He said at the time that he expects the program to be “fully operational before the end of my term,” which ends in January 2029.
“In the last 40 years, rather than decreasing, the threat of next-generation strategic weapons has become greater and more complex with the development of peers and close and adversaries of next-generation delivery systems,” said Trump in his administration, citing the need for a missile defense system.
CBO’s estimates are based in part on a lack of information from the US Department of Defense about how many programs will be used, “making it difficult to estimate the long-term costs” of the Golden Dome program, the report said.
In some ways it is motivated by the defense of Israel
The idea of a missile system was at least partly inspired by Israel’s multi-layered defense, often called the “Iron Dome,” which played a major role in protecting it from rocket and missile fire from Iran and allied opposition groups as it fought Iran alongside the US.
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday unveiled the first plans for a three-year, $175-billion US project to build a multi-purpose missile shield he calls the Golden Dome. He said Canada had asked to join the missile defense system and that the country would pay its ‘fair share.’ There was no immediate comment from Ottawa.
The US Golden Dome is thought to combine ground and air-based capabilities capable of detecting, intercepting and stopping missiles from all major possible attack ranges.
Congress has already approved nearly $24 billion in funding for the US missile defense program through the Republicans’ massive tax and spending measure signed into law last summer.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, requested the measure from the CBO, in response to a report that the missile defense project is “nothing more than a huge donation to defense contractors who are paid entirely by working Americans.”
Last May, the president said the Golden Dome would cost $175 billion. The CBO last year estimated that the space-based components of the Golden Dome would cost about $542 billion over the next 20 years.
