Sullivan, Cramer Introduce Golden Dome Act

A group of Senate Republicans led by Alaska’s Dan Sullivan and North Dakota’s Kevin Cramer introduced the Golden Dome Act today to authorize President Trump’s new missile defense shield. Indiana’s Rep. Mark Messner is introducing it in the House. Although Congress is expected to approve $25 billion in funding for Golden Dome in the reconciliation bill, legislation has not been enacted to formally establish the program. The bill’s sponsors plan to incorporate it in the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

At a press conference today, Sullivan, Cramer, several other Senators and Messner presented their case for Golden Dome and for the legislation. The bill’s name, Golden Dome, stands for “Ground and Orbital Launched Defeat of Emergent Nuclear Destruction and Other Missile Engagements.”

Sullivan, who along with Cramer introduced the IRONDOME Act in February before Trump changed the name, noted that the conflict in the Middle East is demonstrating the need for modernized, robust missile defense. “We need to build the Golden Dome for America” and the “three prongs of successful policy in D.C.” are driving it: presidential leadership, which Trump is providing; appropriations, in the reconciliation bill; and comprehensive authorizing legislation, which they are introducing today.

The reconciliation bill as passed by the House and under consideration in the Senate includes $24.7 billion for Golden Dome, but this bill would authorize $23 billion. The difference was not explained, but authorization bills only set policy in any case. They may recommend funding levels, but don’t actually provide any money.

The bill authorizes $9.1 billion specifically for space-based components:

• $100 million for Space Development Agency satellite sensors
• $5.9 billion for research, development and deployment of space-based missile defense and sensor networks
• $3.1 billion for Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space sensor vehicles

Space-based systems might also be included in other funding lines such as the $2.5 billion for air moving target indicator systems and the $1.5 billion for research, development and deployment of positioning, navigation, and timing systems.

Trump proposed what was originally called the Iron Dome for America in a January 27, 2025 Executive Order and gave DOD 60 days to present a reference architecture for a multi-layered missile defense shield with land-, air-, sea- and space-based components. The name was changed to Golden Dome in part to differentiate it from Israel’s Iron Dome, which is only a ground-based system and designed to protect a country that’s quite small compared to the United States.

Some confusion exists as to exactly what the Trump Administration has in mind, though. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth presented the reference architecture to Trump on May 20, but Republicans and Democrats on both sides of Capitol Hill lament they haven’t been provided with the details. Trump said it will cost $175 billion and be completed in three years, by the end of his term. That’s a much lower cost and shorter timescale than other estimates. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of the Space-Based Interceptor (SBI) portion of the system alone at $542 billion. Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Montana), a co-sponsor of the bill, said  in May it would cost “in the trillions” to complete.

In addition, during a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing last week, Hegseth told Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) that DOD is “leveraging existing technologies and not premising the project on aspirational technologies.” That seems at odds with the Executive Order, which calls for a system that includes “development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors capable of boost-phase intercept.” At the press conference today Senators talked about high-energy lasers, directed-energy weapons, and accelerating next-generation space-based sensors and interceptors.  The question really is how far do Golden Dome supporters expect to get during the next three years versus a much longer-term vision.

Another question has been where the head of the Golden Dome program sits in the DOD hierarchy. On May 20, Trump appointed Gen. Michael Guetlein, U.S. Space Force Vice Chief of Space Operations, as program manager and on June 18 nominated him “as direct reporting manager for Golden Dome for America” at the Pentagon. This bill codifies that the Golden Dome program manager reports directly to the Secretary of Defense “and will be placed directly under the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Department of Defense order of precedence.”

The program manager is responsible for the “acquisition, contracting, development, testing and initial operations and sustainment of Golden Dome.” Defense acquisition reform, a perennial issue, is addressed in this bill. Sullivan said the legislation “will lead to a wholesale overhaul of our defense acquisition system” using an open architecture design and integrating traditional defense prime contractors with emerging defense technology companies.

Other Senate co-sponsors, all Republicans, are John Hoeven (North Dakota), Tim Sheehy (Montana), Katie Britt (Alabama), Jim Banks (Indiana), Tom Cotton (Arkansas), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee), Tommy Tuberville (Alabama), and Tim Scott (South Carolina).

Golden Dome builds on President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s. Technology wasn’t ready  to implement such a system then and skepticism persists as to whether it’s possible now. At the SASC hearing, Kelly honed in on that question in his exchange with Hegseth asking if he really thinks it’s 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.