FEATURED · GOLDEN DOME FOR AMERICA
CARES DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE · ANALYTICAL BRIEF
The Golden Dome cost meter — priced by the foot.
Move the dial. Read the price. From $24 billion enacted to CBO's $1.2 trillion twenty-year estimate. Every setting recomputes cost per square foot, per person, per taxpayer, and per household — live.
Companion brief · Same Dome
Building it is a different problem.
"Not a technology challenge — it is an organizational behavior and social engineering challenge." — Gen. Guetlein, Sept 2026
Read Same Dome →DETAILED WORKSHEET
Jump to a public estimate below to snap the meter above to that anchor. Add per-capita views to translate program cost into person, taxpayer, and household terms.
GOLDEN DOME · GDA
Current setting reflects the meter above · 5 public estimate anchors
COST PER SQUARE FOOT
—
TOTAL AREA
million sq mi
PER ACRE
43,560 sq ft
FOR SCALE
How the meter's cost per square foot lands against real estate you know — Manhattan to West Virginia — plus a US aircraft carrier deck, common flooring, a foreign missile defense benchmark, and a first-class stamp.
MOST EXPENSIVE MARKET
NYC Manhattan
$1,500/ft² · Median residential (Redfin Q1 2026, ~$1,440/ft² rounded).
CHEAPEST STATE
West Virginia
$104/ft² · $177,887 median ÷ 1,714 ft² typical (Zillow ZHVI Q2 2026 · Experian).
AVERAGE FLOORING
Linoleum (US)
$5/ft² · Installed average (Homewyse May 2026 $4.72–$6.40 · Today's Homeowner reports $4.50 avg).
US NAVAL BENCHMARK
Coverage per Ford-class carrier
$13.3B procurement · USS Gerald R. Ford, first-in-class Ford-type supercarrier (NAVSEA · 19FortyFive Aug 2026). At the meter's current setting, one carrier equals this share of the total defended area.
FOREIGN BENCHMARK
vs Iron Dome (Israel)
2.10¢/ft² · ~$5B program ÷ 8,522 sq mi Israel land. Point defense against artillery rockets — not a strategic missile shield.
CONSUMER REFERENCE
Coverage per Forever stamp
USPS Forever stamp $0.82, effective 12 Jul 2026. Answers: how much homeland defense does one stamp buy?
Publicly cited estimates for Golden Dome for America span more than two orders of magnitude — from the $24 billion appropriated in the FY2025 reconciliation package (P.L. 119-21, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) to the American Enterprise Institute's $3.6 trillion upper bound for a robust all-threat architecture (Harrison, Sept 2025). Between them sit the White House's revised $185 billion (Guetlein, March 2026) and the Congressional Budget Office's $1.2 trillion full 20-year estimate (May 2026). Neither the floor nor the ceiling, on its own, conveys the physical or per-capita scale of what is being purchased.
Cover Charge translates each anchor into two intuitive units: cost per square foot of covered territory, and cost per person, taxpayer, and household. The intent is magnitude — a working sense of scale for use in analysis, briefings, and public communication — not fiscal projection.
COMPANION BRIEF · A CARES DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE PIECE
"Building Golden Dome is not a technology challenge — it is an organizational behavior and social engineering challenge. How do I get all this kit that was built for a different fight, a different customer, and never meant to work together?"
— Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, Director, Golden Dome for America · Sept 14, 2026
This meter measures the cost. The companion brief — Same Dome, Different Lenses, Different Fights — argues that the harder problem is organizational: seven services and agencies, each with its own kit, doctrine, and institutional customer, being asked to hand off cleanly across seams that none of the kit was ever built to cross.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS · MAY 2025 → SEP 2026
The program is no longer theoretical. Contracts are on the books, industry is competing, an operational unit has been assigned, and Guetlein has publicly committed to a summer 2028 initial capability.
SEP 2025
$3.6T
AEI upper bound
Todd Harrison modeled six Golden Dome architectures ranging from $252B (limited tactical) to $3.6T (robust all-threat defense) over 20 years in FY26 dollars.
MAR 2026
$185B
Program cost revised up
Guetlein confirmed the official cost estimate rose from $175B to $185B to procure "additional space capabilities."
JAN 2026
JFRP
JCIDS ends, JFRP activates
CJCSM 5123.01 authoritative Jan 15. JCIDS disestablished; services now validate their own requirements. JROC reorients to Joint Force Design, Joint Capability Integration, and CCMD requirements — reshaping the joint context Golden Dome integrates through.
APR 2026
$3.2B
12 SBI primes selected
Space Systems Command awarded OTAs to Anduril, Booz Allen, GDMS, GITAI USA, Lockheed, Northrop, Quindar, Raytheon, Sci-Tec, SpaceX, True Anomaly, and Turion.
APR 2026
$17.9B
FY2027 budget request
Pentagon FY2027 defense budget submission included $17.9B for Golden Dome — a shift toward homeland defense against peer-level missile threats.
JUL 2026
$1.75B
36 tracking satellites
Space Development Agency awarded contracts for 36 HBTSS-like missile-tracking satellites to build the Golden Dome sensing layer.
AUG 2026
Gate 1
All 12 SBI primes advance
The 12 competitors for space-based interceptor development cleared the first of four gates in the novel prize-based demonstration effort.
AUG 2026
1st Unit
Army assigns first AD unit
Lt. Gen. Rafferty announced at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium that the Army has assigned its first existing air-defense unit to the Golden Dome mission.
AUG 2026
90%
Funding obligated
Guetlein confirmed 90% of the program office's funding is on contract. The office received $22.5B of the $24.4B FY26 appropriation in March 2026.
SEP 2026
2028
Initial capability target
At the Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Guetlein publicly committed the program to delivering "an operational capability by the summer of 2028."
START ANALYZING
BY PROGRAM COST
Jump to any of the five public cost anchors, layer on per-person, per-taxpayer, per-household views, and read the metric tiles.
Open the worksheet →BY THREAT CLASS
Four tiers — space, upper, lower, terminal — each handling a different threat class from ICBMs to UAS. What the cost buys, tier by tier.
See the layers →BY DATA PROVENANCE
Twenty-seven public sources — CBO, IRS, Census, CRS, USPS, NOAA — with assumptions documented. Every figure traces back.
Read the methodology →COST CURVES
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
Golden Dome is a layered system-of-systems. Each tier addresses a distinct threat class. CBO's $1.2 trillion estimate is dominated (~70%) by the space-based interceptor layer — the tier program manager Gen. Michael Guetlein has publicly indicated may not survive final design.
SPACE + UPPER TIER
Exoatmospheric parabolic trajectory. Detected by SBIRS/Next-Gen OPIR, intercepted in mid-course.
Interceptors: GBI (GMD), NGI, SM-3 Blk IIA
SPACE + LOWER TIER
Mach 5+ skip-glide in upper atmosphere. Maneuvering flight requires continuous tracking.
Interceptors: GPI, SM-6, HBTSS
LOWER TIER + TERMINAL
Low altitude, terrain-following, sub- or supersonic. Difficult radar detection.
Interceptors: PAC-3, SM-6, NASAMS, IFPC
LOWER TIER + TERMINAL
Medium-altitude (3,500–18,000 ft AGL), longer-range unmanned systems — Group III (55–1,320 lbs) up through Group V. Larger radar cross-section and higher speeds than hobbyist drones.
Interceptors: NASAMS, Coyote Blk 3, IFPC, LIDS, M-SHORAD
SCENARIO SNAPSHOTS
Each figure has a different scope and a different observer. Click any card to load that anchor into the meter above.
SOURCES & DOCUMENTATION
Twenty-seven sources — primary or authoritative secondary reporting — retrieved September 2026.