Guetlein Says Golden Dome Architecture Will Be Ready in 60 Days

On his second day on the job, Gen. Michael Guetlein said today he has been given 60 days to come up with an objective architecture for President Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense shield. He is convinced the technology, including space-based interceptors, already exists to protect America from incoming missiles from multiple adversaries. Trump announced in May the system will be completed in three years, by the end of his term, at a cost of $175 billion, a timeline and cost far below other estimates.

Guetlein participated in a fireside chat today with Gen. Jay Raymond (Ret.) at the Space Foundation’s Global Economic Summit in Arlington, VA.  Raymond was the first U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations as well as Commander of U.S. Space Command after it was reestablished by Trump in 2019.

Trump nominated Guetlein to head Golden Dome in May and he was confirmed by the Senate on July 17. He had been Vice Chief of Space Operations at the U.S. Space Force. Over his more than 30-year career in the military he’s served as Commander of Space Systems Command, Deputy Director and Air Force Element Commander of the National Reconnaissance Office, and Program Executive for Programs and Integration at the Missile Defense Agency.

Today was his first public opportunity to share his perspective on the task ahead.  One advantage is that his position was established as a “Direct Reporting Program Manager” or DRPM meaning he reports directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg. That gives him special authorities and fewer people who can say “no.”

“What the Deputy Secretary of Defense did was have me directly report to him and they gave me a whole list of authorities. Budget authorities, acquisition authorities, direct hiring authorities, technical authorities, architectural authorities, etc., liaison authorities, so I can move with haste to deliver this capability without a lot of people along the way being able to tell me no, but also being able to reach down into the various stovepipes, grabbing the capabilities we need to integrate, network together, and bring them to bear on our problem.”

Leveraging the commercial space sector has become a key element of military operations in recent years. That culture change is ongoing, he said, but essential to Golden Dome’s success. Two “industry days” are coming up, one led by the Missile Defense Agency and the other by USSF’s Space Systems Command, to engage with industry and have an “open, transparent dialogue” about how they can work together to build Golden Dome.

Golden Dome is a multi-layered system-of-systems to protect America from missile attacks. Derived from President Ronald Reagan’s 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) concept, it involves air-, land-, sea-, and space-based components.  The U.S. has a limited missile defense system now using ground-based systems in Alaska and California and sea-based Aegis cruisers that could counter an attack from North Korea, for example. But Guetlein pointed to a long list of growing threats from China and Russia including ballistic missiles with decoys, jammers and spoofers, stealth cruise missiles, and hypersonics. Technologies weren’t available in the 1980s to build SDI, but Golden Dome advocates believe they are now.

The space-based components involve both sensors and interceptors. DOD already has many space-based sensors that are critical to warfighting operations, but not space-based interceptors. Guetlein is convinced space-based interceptors can be ready by 2028, the target set by President Trump, from a technical standpoint. The challenge is fielding them economically and at scale.

I think the real technical challenge will be building the space-based interceptor. That technology exists.  I believe we have proven every element of the physics that we can make it work. What we have not proven is, first, can I do it economically, and then second, can I do it at scale? Can I build enough satellites to get after that threat? Do I have enough raw materials, etc. So that will be our biggest challenge, I think, technically, is proving that we can scale it and then proving we can do it economically.”

Coincidentally, Northrop Grumman held its second quarter 2025 financial results telecon today and Kathy Warden, Chairman, President and CEO, said the company is testing space-based interceptors right now. She later clarified they are ground-based tests.

Apart from technical challenges, Guetlein repeatedly cited “C2” — Command and Control — as a hurdle to overcome. Integrating capabilities built in stovepipes by different services and agencies into a single architecture will take a whole of government approach, but he is optimistic it can happen “in pretty short order.”

He cautioned there are “a lot of people speaking in public about what they think the threat is and what they think Golden Dome is,” but they don’t. That work hasn’t been done yet. In fact, he’s meeting with Gen. Gregory Guillot, Commander of U.S. Northern Command, and Gen. Stephen Whiting, Commander of U.S. Space Command, later this week “to talk about what is the problem that we’re trying to solve.”

“That’s going to define the size of the architecture. That’s going to decide the size of the organization that we’ve got to build, etc., and then, based on that objective architecture, can we effectively counter that threat that we define in 2028. That’s what we have to do. That’s how we’re defining success.”

Not everyone is convinced the technologies are ready and others worry Golden Dome will trigger China and Russia to field similar systems, increasing the chances of war in space. At a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) asked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth if he really thought it would be possible to build a system to “intercept all incoming threats” which is “a very hard physics problem” to defeat hundreds of ICBMs and MIRVs, thousands of decoys, and hypersonic glide vehicles, all at once. Kelly, a former Naval aviator and former NASA astronaut, has also cautioned that “We should really think through what this means for nuclear proliferation and our own safety. Is this going to make us safer?”

Congress included $25 billion in the reconciliation bill for Golden Dome. Trump said on May 20 the total cost would be $175 billion with the system completed by 2028, the end of his term. By contrast, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost of the Space-Based Interceptor (SBI) portion of the system alone at $542 billion and Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Montana), who chairs the Senate Golden Dome caucus, said in May it would cost “in the trillions.”