The House Armed Services Committee’s draft NDAA would require the Pentagon to provide Congress with answers about how the department intends to realize President Donald Trump’s proposed Golden Dome antimissile shield over America. The fact that the panel’s fiscal 2026 bill is asking for this information is the latest sign that even the defense oversight committees know little about what Trump’s vision for missile defense might entail. This is the case despite the fact that the reconciliation bill enacted on July 4 appropriates about $25 billion for a variety of antimissile systems, many of which lawmakers said they foresee as part of the Golden Dome architecture. Trump announced the launch of his Golden Dome project in May, but he described it only in broad terms as a way to protect America from missiles launched from anywhere in the world, including by being able to intercept them from U.S. military satellites. Even a less expansive system, if it included space assets, could cost more than $1 trillion, leading experts said. Since Trump’s announcement, the Pentagon has declined to provide the press with more information about Golden Dome, and the department canceled an industry day in June meant to inform contractors of plans. The GOP-led House Appropriations Committee, in the report accompanying its fiscal 2026 Defense spending bill, said the Pentagon has yet to give Congress information about Golden Dome and “what exactly it entails,” leaving open questions about whether the proposed system is “feasible and affordable,” the appropriators wrote. Plan’s elements The plan that the House Armed Services Committee would require of the Pentagon must be delivered within one year of the bill’s enactment into law and must be updated in fiscal years 2028, 2029 and 2030. The plan, the committee’s report said, must include a missile threat assessment. The required document must also reveal to Congress the Golden Dome’s proposed elements, such as sensors and interceptors on Earth or in orbit. In so doing, the plan must describe “each capability, program, and project,” plus the cost, schedule and concept of operations. The required report must also convey to Congress the system’s requirements for use of the electromagnetic spectrum. Some members of Congress are concerned that portions of the spectrum required for Golden Dome may be auctioned off to commercial interests. The Pentagon report to Congress must also tell lawmakers which Defense Department organizations will execute the program and provide an assessment of the system’s testing and training implications and a strategy for ensuring supply chain security. In addition to that required plan, the bill also would mandate a separate report on the status of America’s so-called theater missile defenses. Those are the antimissile systems designed to intercept short- and medium-range missiles or drones in conflict zones around the world — as opposed to the globe-spanning ballistic missile and hypersonic missile threats to America that Golden Dome would target. Policy change Trump said in the Oval Office on May 20 that the Golden Dome system would cost $175 billion in total and would be “fully operational” by 2029 — projections that seasoned defense experts have called optimistic. Trump’s sweeping description of the Golden Dome as a defense against threats from anywhere on the globe suggested the system would need to protect against even the massive missile arsenals of Russia and China. In keeping with that view, the Republican leaders of the House Armed Services Committee have proposed in their draft NDAA to change to America’s national missile defense policy. Current law says the U.S. national missile defense shouldn’t be designed to intercept threats from “near-peer adversaries” — in other words, Russia and China — but instead should deter those countries through the power of America’s offensive nuclear arsenal. The current U.S. homeland antimissile system comprises 44 interceptors in Alaska and California that are optimized to defeat a limited attack by a handful of missiles from North Korea or other rogue actors — not threats from Russia or China. By contrast, the House Armed Services Committee’s draft NDAA would change the policy so that the U.S. strategic defense would now be geared toward defeating “any foreign aerial attack on the homeland,” a far more comprehensive, expensive and technically challenging objective.
