Anything with golden in the name is bound to cost a pretty penny, and that's certainly the case with President Trump's new 'Golden Dome' missile defense program which has led officials to admit the true cost of it all.
While much of US President Donald Trump's return to office has been about saving money with the new Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, his latest move will almost definitely incur significant costs over a long period of time.
President Trump has made a habit of cutting projects he believes are taking too long during the last few months, having slashed plans for both the California high-speed rail project alongside NASA's Mars Sample Return and Space Launch System missions.
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However, he's now shown that he's willing to wait out the potential two decades for the newly-established 'Golden Dome' to be completed, emphasizing its importance in keeping Americans safe from foreign threats that could appear in the future.
It's easy enough to take the name literally and imagine a literal dome made of gold being placed on top of American soil, but the moniker is a mere reference to the defensive capabilities that this new project would afford the United States.
As reported by The Guardian, the Golden Dome is a missile defense program that would utilize both ground and space-based intercepters to prevent any foreign adversaries from attacking America.
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"Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, even if they are launched from space, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland," illustrated President Trump.
Much has been said about the potential missile threat from America's current biggest 'rivals', as countries like China, Russia, and North Korea all posses weapons capable of inflicting significant damage to the United States.
It's also unclear what form and to what scale the Golden Dome will take, although many experts speculate that Musk's SpaceX will be a key involved party due to its experience with both rockets and satellites.
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While it all sounds great in theory, the major caveat to President Trump's plan is the price, which officials have speculated to be incredibly high. The congressional budget office has indicated that, over the next two decades, the cost of the Golden Dome could exceed $540,000,000,000.
This doesn't look too bad though when placed against the single-year defense budget of the United States, which sits at around $977 billion, so it represents just 2.76% of that figure stretched across a 20-year period - although some might argue that there are more pressing uses of that money right now.
The Trump administration has put down around $25,000,000,000 as an starter budget for the project though, which is only meant to cover the initial costs, and it's final total depends on how extensive the president decides to make the project overall.