Senate forms ‘Golden Dome Caucus’ to champion missile defense shield

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ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Senate has formed a new “Golden Dome Caucus” focused on developing what could become one of the nation’s most expensive defense initiatives in history — a comprehensive missile shield designed to protect the American homeland from an increasingly complex array of aerial threats.

Sen. Tim Sheehy (R., Mont.) announced the caucus May 13 at an industry event hosted by The Washington Times, cautioning that despite strong support from the Trump administration and defense committees, there remains insufficient understanding of the project’s complexity and potential cost.

“That’s why I’m announcing today the formation of the Golden Dome Caucus in the U.S. Senate,” said Sheehy, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities. “Because I think a project of this scope, like we saw in the Apollo program and in the Manhattan Project, is going to require a far more close relationship between the appropriators, the Defense Department, our legislators and industry.”

While GOP lawmakers have proposed adding $25 billion to the defense budget for the project in fiscal year 2025, Sheehy offered a stark assessment of the program’s true scale: “It will not be a $25 billion or $35 billion project. It will likely cost in the trillions if and when Golden Dome is completed.”

The initiative draws inspiration from Israel’s Iron Dome system, which has demonstrated effectiveness in intercepting short-range rockets. However, Sheehy emphasized that scaling such technology to protect the entire United States presents fundamentally different challenges.

“Simply cutting and pasting Iron Dome and expanding it to cover the U.S., as you all know, that’s a fundamentally different technological proposition, and the challenges don’t scale linearly with the size of Israel, which is the size of New Jersey,” Sheehy said.

Shifting balance of power

The push for Golden Dome comes amid concerns about America’s position in the global military technology race. Sheehy, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who defeated three-term Democratic incumbent Jon Tester in 2024, challenged the Pentagon’s characterization of nations like China as “near-peer competitors.”

“We are in a peer-to-peer fight, and in many cases, peers are better than we are,” Sheehy warned, citing recent border skirmishes between India and Pakistan where Chinese-made drones reportedly outperformed Western defense systems used by India.

Sen. Deb Fischer (R., Neb.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces subcommittee, described Golden Dome as an “opportunity to make a generational leap forward in missile defense.” She noted that current systems, primarily ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California, cannot adequately address emerging threats like hypersonic missiles and space-launched delivery vehicles.

Space-based components

A significant portion of the initial $25 billion proposed for Golden Dome will fund space-based sensors and interceptors designed to target threat missiles during their boost phase. Retired Gen. Glen VanHerck, former commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, estimated that developing and fielding this space architecture could take five to 10 years.

Fischer cited concerns raised by current NORAD commander Gen. Gregory Guillot about whether the deployment of space sensors for missile defense might be impacted by DoD’s access to electromagnetic spectrum. Guillot told lawmakers that plans to allow commercial users to share the 3.1-3.45 GHz spectrum band with DoD could cripple space-based missile defense. The Federal Communications Commission is still considering whether to auction the spectrum.

“President Trump’s proposed Golden Dome is simply impossible if the department loses access to certain spectrum bands,” Fischer said, specifically referencing the 3.1-3.45 GHz band currently used by NORAD. 

Growing threat landscape

The Defense Intelligence Agency on May 13 released an unclassified infographic detailing evolving missile threats to the United States.

“Missile threats to the U.S. homeland will expand in scale and sophistication in the coming decade,” the DIA reported. “China and Russia are developing an array of novel delivery systems to exploit gaps in current U.S. ballistic missile defenses.”

According to DIA, both Russia and China are developing new delivery systems — including hypersonic weapons and orbital strike platforms — that exploit blind spots in current U.S. defenses. Traditional ICBMs remain the principal threat, but air-launched cruise missiles, submarine-launched hypersonics, and space-enabled platforms are quickly reshaping the threat landscape.

Procurement challenges

With regard to Golden Dome, Sheehy also highlighted institutional barriers to the project’s success, arguing that the current Pentagon procurement system is too rigid to support such an ambitious undertaking.

“I think it’s time for a wake-up call for America, for our defense industry, for those of us in uniform and those of us who serve on the Hill. We need to reimagine how we acquire things to support our warfighter,” Sheehy said.

He called for closer collaboration between government and private industry, noting that “government is not the home of innovation” and that maintaining traditional boundaries between the Pentagon and contractors creates “a siloing of innovation and a siloing of growth.”

As the Golden Dome moves into the planning phase, Sheehy urged industry leaders to prepare for a new era of partnership. “If you’re part of industry, I say, please be ready for a new era,” he said. “Industry is where the innovation is going to happen.”

With potential costs running into the trillions of dollars and technological hurdles that remain largely undefined, Golden Dome, said Sheehy, is potentially “the most expensive, adjusted for inflation, single innovation program since Apollo and since the Manhattan Project.”