Just days after returning to the White House in January, Trump unveiled plans for the system, aimed at countering “next-generation” aerial threats.<\/p>\n
He said last year that the programme would require an initial investment of $25bn, with a total cost of $175bn over time.<\/p>\n
Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, who requested the estimate in the report, said on Tuesday: “The President’s so-called ‘Golden Dome’ is nothing more than a massive giveaway to \u200bdefense contractors paid for entirely by working Americans.”<\/p>\n
The BBC contacted the White House and the Pentagon for comment.<\/p>\n
There have been doubts about whether the US would be able to deliver a comprehensive defence system for such a huge land mass.<\/p>\n
Officials have warned that existing systems have not kept pace with increasingly sophisticated weapons possessed by potential adversaries.<\/p>\n
Despite the projected costs of the Golden Dome, “the system could be overwhelmed by a full-scale attack mounted by a peer or near-peer adversary”, the CBO said.<\/p>\n
An executive order calling for the creation of what was initially termed the “Iron Dome for America” noted that the threat of next-generation weapons has “become more intense and complex” over time, a potentially “catastrophic” scenario for the US.<\/p>\n
A week into his second term, Trump ordered the defence department to submit plans for a system that would deter and defend against aerial attacks, which the White House said at the time remain “the most catastrophic threat” facing the US.<\/p>\n
Trump said the system would consist of “next-generation” technologies across land, sea and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors.<\/p>\n
The system would be “capable even of intercepting missiles launched from the other side of the world, or launched from space”, the president said last year.<\/p>\n
SpaceX and Lockheed Martin last month won contracts worth up to $3.2bn to develop space-based missile interceptor prototypes for the system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just days after returning to the White House in January, Trump unveiled plans for the system, aimed at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-581151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}