©picture alliance / Newscom | Chris Kleponis
Donald Trump announced an ambitious plan at the start of his second term: the Golden Dome should protect the US from any possible missile attack. Part of this protection system should even be placed in space. The price tag now appears to be astronomical.
The US Congressional Budget Office CBO reports that Trump's golden dome will cost not $175 billion, as first thought, but $1,200 billion (about 1,022 billion euros). Only the purchase of the system is estimated at $1,000 billion; the part to be placed in space accounts for about two-thirds of that cost.
The Golden Dome is a large-scale, layered missile defense system that would have to operate partly in space and protect the entire US from ballistic, cruise and hypersonic threats. For now, this is just a proposal from the President, and its hallucinatory price tag is generating few enthusiastic reactions. Trump drew inspiration for his plan from Israel's Iron Dome, which aims to defuse short-range projectiles. Trump's Golden Dome, however, is a much more ambitious and complex project. According to Trump, it's necessary, given that the US territory is a whopping 445 times larger than Israel's. Indeed, the Republican aims to protect against intercontinental missiles, hypersonic and other strategic threats over the entire US territory.
According to plans presented to some 3,000 defense contractors last summer, the Golden Dome would consist of four integrated layers of defense. One layer operates in space and should provide early warning, tracking of launch paths and an initial phase of interception. The other three layers are terrestrial: they include missile interceptors, advanced radar systems and even lasers.
Trump previously said he wants his ambitious "Golden Dome" missile shield in the air by the end of his term.
©picture alliance / Newscom | Chris Kleponis