Trump awards $4B to Elon Musk to develop crucial component of US 'Golden Dome'
President Donald Trump has awarded Elon Musk with a $4 billion contract to develop a crucial component of the US ‘Golden Dome’.
Seemingly inspired by Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ defense system, last year Trump announced that the US would be getting its own version.
The so-called ‘Golden Dome’ is set to cost at least a whopping $175 billion to construct and it seems like Musk will be involved in its development.
The tech mogul and on-and-off buddy of the president has been awarded $4 billion for his firm SpaceX to build missile-tracking satellites for the project.
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As reported by Reuters, the deal is for a ‘satellite program designed to track and target airborne threats’.
In a statement shared by the Space Force, it said: “This initial award is projected to field a constellation of satellites by 2028, providing the Joint Force with an early capability to eliminate operational blind spots.”
In his initial announcement in 2025, Trump vowed that the ‘Golden Dome’ would knock all missiles out of the sky with the success rate being ‘very close to 100%’.
At the time, the president went on to say: “Once fully constructed, the ‘Golden Dome’ will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they are launched from space, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland.”
While it was initially thought that the Dome would cost somewhere between $175 billion to $540 billion, experts are now warning that it could set the country back by a whopping $831 billion.
A study by American Enterprise Institute (AEI) went on to reveal that analysts believe the system could cost up to $3.6 trillion over the next 20 years.
AEI senior researcher Todd Harrison said: “As long as its requirements are undefined, Golden Dome can cost as much or as little as policymakers are willing to spend.”
In September 2025, North Korea weighed in on the matter, describing the plans as being a ‘threatening initiative’ rather than a defense measure, calling it ‘the largest arms buildup plan in history’.
In the memorandum, the nation went on to claim that the ‘Golden Dome’ threatens the entire global security environment, adding that the US has been ‘hell-bent on the moves to militarize outer space’.
The statement continued: “The US plan for building a new missile defense system is the root cause of sparking off a global nuclear and space arms race by stimulating the security concerns of nuclear weapons states and turning outer space into a potential nuclear war field.”