Think $151 Billion Is Expensive For Golden Dome? Try $1.2…

Oleh Patinko • May 17, 2026

“[$1.2 trillion] for defense, not one cent for tribute”?

This new number isn’t a rumor, a guess, or even an estimate. It’s the official projection from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on the cost of building Golden Dome over the next 20 years. It also has serious implications for investors wanting to buy s of defense companies, both large (Boeing (BA 3.75%), Lockheed Martin (LMT 0.78%), and RTX Corporation (RTX 2.56%), for example) and somewhat smaller (Intuitive Machines (LUNR 7.01%), Rocket Lab (RKLB 5.95%), and Viasat (VSAT 6.41%) among them) that have already won Golden Dome contracts.

Because the more you learn about Golden Dome and its price tag, the less ly it becomes that this thing will ever get built.

Golden Dome by the numbers

Consider just a few of the CBO’s findings. CBO breaks down Golden Dome into six major “system components,” plus a seventh, $92 billion catch-all covering research and development costs. Starting at the bottom, and moving up, Golden Dome will probably comprise:

Self-defense for existing ground-based missile defense rocket bases: $4 billion over 20 years.
An expanded network of ground-based interceptor missiles covering low-flying missiles: $29 billion.
Even more ground-based interceptor missiles targeting upper-atmosphere threats: $46 billion.
Orbiting satellites carrying space-based interceptor missiles: $90 billion.
Ground-based interceptor missiles covering entire regional theaters of defense: $187 billion.
And finally, 7,800 space-based interceptor (SBI) missiles costing $743 billion.

Add it up, and CBO estimates the 20-year cost of Golden Dome at $1.2 trillion — $1.191 trillion to be precise. Just buying all the materiel to assemble the system will cost $1 trillion. After that initial investment, operating and maintaining it over time will cost $8.3 billion per year.

And even that number is optimistic.

The trouble with Golden Dome

As defense news site TWZ correctly pointed out earlier this week, it’s the last item on the list that’s having the greatest impact on Golden Dome’s cost. Buying 7,800 SBI missiles will cost $723 billion up front, plus $1 billion per year to maintain.

And here’s the real problem: To be placed in close enough proximity to a hostile missile to destroy it within minutes of launch (in its boost phase when it’s most vulnerable), the satellites that carry these SBI missiles must orbit close to Earth — roughly 300 to 500 kilometers. Low-orbiting satellites by definition cannot remain in orbit for long — perhaps five years before they slow down and burn up in the atmosphere. Thus, 20% of the SBI fleet must be replaced annually.

That’s 1,600 more SBI missile satellites that must be replaced per year, every year, forever. Over just the first 20-year time span, this works out to “roughly 30,000 satellites” required — three times more satellites than even SpaceX has launched since it became a company. (Side note: CBO believes SpaceX’s Starship will be essential to providing the launch capacity to build Golden Dome in the first place.)

The other trouble with Golden Dome

So even $1.2 trillion is just the new starting point for Golden Dome’s cost. But after spending so much, will Golden Dome at least be “worth it”?

This raises the next big issue with Golden Dome: capability.

Because Golden Dome’s SBI interceptors aim to defeat threats at their source, the satellites cannot cluster over the United States alone, forming a “dome.” They must instead form a globe, encompassing the whole Earth, covering every country that might pose a threat and every inch of ocean where a nuclear submarine might lurk.

Spread out in this manner, only a few SBIs would be close enough to engage a threat at any one time. CBO estimates that at best, Golden Dome could protect America from no more than 10 missile launches at a time.

Although it’s an admirable idea in theory, I fear the Golden Dome will ultimately be deemed too expensive and impractical to justify building. It may take years and billions of dollars before Congress comes to the same conclusion, but my prediction is Golden Dome will end up canceled far short of completion.

Rich Smith is a contributing Motley Fool defense and stock market analyst covering publicly traded and emerging companies in defense, space, aerospace, and other sectors. Prior to The Motley Fool, Rich practiced international corporate law for Clifford Chance in Russia, and for the Russian-Ukrainian Legal Group in Moscow, Kyiv, and Washington, D.C. He holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the College of William & Mary, a law degree from the University of Baltimore, and a language certification from the International Institute of Russian Language & Culture in Tver, Russian Federation. The Globe and Mail once featured him as “one of the best stock pickers since 2009.”

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Stocks Mentioned

Rocket Lab

NASDAQ: RKLB

$124.67

(-5.95%)-$7.88

Boeing

NYSE: BA

$220.49

(-3.80%)-$8.72

RTX

NYSE: RTX

$171.18

(-2.56%)-$4.50

Lockheed Martin

NYSE: LMT

$516.33

(-0.78%)-$4.08

Viasat

NASDAQ: VSAT

$69.54

(-6.41%)-$4.76

Intuitive Machines

NASDAQ: LUNR

$33.89

(-7.20%)-$2.63

*Average returns of all recommendations since inception. Cost basis and return based on previous market day close.

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