Trump Administration Advances Golden Dome Missile Defense Initiative

The order calls for protection against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks. The initiative, referred to as Golden Dome, seeks to address limitations in existing defenses that were designed more than twenty years ago using technology from the 1990s and early 2000s.

A Defense Intelligence Agency report from May 13, 2025, states that North Korea has tested intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the entire U.S. homeland and is projected to possess fifty such missiles by 2035. China currently possesses 460 ICBMs and three hundred silos, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

China has also developed and deployed hypersonic missiles and launched a fractional orbital bombardment vehicle. Russia has deployed 330 ICBMs and 192 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, according to a 2025 nongovernmental estimate. Russia is developing the Sarmat missile and the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle.

Advances in space launch costs, manufacturing, sensor technology, communications networks, computing, and artificial intelligence have made a layered defense system more feasible than in previous decades. The proposed architecture would integrate space-based sensors and interceptors with modernized ground- and sea-based systems to provide defense against the full range of threats.

Robert Peters, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, stated that effective deterrence involves both reducing the effectiveness of an adversary's potential attack and responding with unacceptable costs.