Braxton Taylor
The Space Force has formed a team of experts to gauge which of its current programs can help build out President Trump’s “Iron Dome for America” initiative—and what still needs to be developed.
The service will play “a central role” in the initiative and has established an “technical integrated planning team to start thinking about it from an overarching perspective,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman told reporters Monday.
The initiative has been officially renamed “Golden Dome,” a defense official confirmed to Defense One. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a Feb. 20 video, referred to “the Golden Dome or Iron Dome.”
Pentagon officials began drawing up plans for the initiative after Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order called for the creation of a “next-generation missile defense shield” to protect the U.S. from missiles or other advanced aerial attacks.
Several agencies’ systems will play a role in the effort, including the Missile Defense Agency’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor satellite and the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.
The planning team will finish up in “a matter of weeks” and identify which Space Force programs could directly support the effort, and what gaps remain for building the missile defense system, a senior Space Force official told reporters Monday.
Trump’s order also calls for the system to include space-based interceptors—a major shift in U.S. policy. But the feasibility of building space-based interceptors, and how quickly the U.S. could field them, remains to be seen.
“I don’t know enough yet to say from a technical perspective where that stands…One of the worst things to do is buy it off a technical challenge that you can’t solve in a reasonable cost frame, a reasonable time frame, and so we’ll be very forthright with, ‘Here’s where we think the technology stands at this juncture,’” the official said.
Funding in the 2026 budget request could also be a challenge. Paying for the missile shield in this budget environment will be a “heavy lift,” the official said.
“I think this concept was conceived with space-based capabilities in mind. And I would hope that if people say there’s space-based capabilities contributing to a mission set, that the first thing that comes to mind is, well, then the Space Force ought to be pretty front and center in that, and I have every indication that that is kind of the way they think about it. It’s a huge effort,” the official said.
“Iron Dome for America” alluded to Israel’s Iron Dome system, a defense against short-range rockets and missiles.
Jennifer Hlad and Bradley Peniston contributed to this report.
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