From now on, President Donald Trump’s effort to create a hugely expanded missile defense system will be called Golden Dome.
“Please note the Department of Defense has renamed this program from ‘Iron Dome for America’ to ‘Golden Dome for America,” the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) wrote in a recent request seeking input from industry on how it could contribute to this effort. This follows what seemed to be an off-hand comment Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made on Feb. 20. In a video explaining the Pentagon’s budget realignment plans, he listed “the Golden Dome, or Iron Dome,” as among defense programs that will be protected from any cuts. The MDA RFI seems to have codified that.
The new name is starting to gain traction. During his confirmation hearing for the position of deputy defense secretary earlier today, Stephen Feinberg was asked by U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) if he supported the creation of the “Iron Dome missile defense shield for America, I think some people called it the Golden Dome…”
Feinberg answered in the affirmative.
It is unknown exactly what circumstances prompted the name to be changed. It is clearly a way to distinguish the plan from the wholly unrelated Israeli Iron Dome system. Made by Raytheon and Israel’s Rafael, as seen in the video below, Israel’s Iron Dome is designed primarily to defend against lower-end and localized threats like artillery rockets and mortar shells. It also now has some capabilities against drones and cruise missiles.
The choice of the new name was likely made to invoke Trump’s famously favorite color, gold. We reached out to the Pentagon and the MDA for more details about when the change was made and why. The MDA referred us to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. We will update this story with any pertinent details provided.
As we have previously reported, one of Trump’s first official acts of his second term was to order the U.S. military to move forward with plans for a massively enlarged missile defense architecture. Dubbed, at the time, Iron Dome, it notably included a call for new space-based anti-missile interceptors. The concept was something Trump talked about on the campaign trail and made official in a Jan. 27 executive order. You can read more about what we knew about the plan before Trump signed it into law in our detailed story here.
From our story about the executive order: It calls for a “next-generation missile defense shield” that “shall include, at a minimum, plans for” the following eight components:
- Defense of the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries
- Acceleration of the deployment of the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor layer
- Development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors capable of boost-phase intercept
- Deployment of underlayer and terminal-phase intercept capabilities postured to defeat a countervalue attack
- Development and deployment of a custody layer of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture
- Development and deployment of capabilities to defeat missile attacks prior to launch and in the boost phase
- Development and deployment of a secure supply chain for all components with next-generation security and resilience features
- Development and deployment of non-kinetic capabilities to augment the kinetic defeat of ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks”
MDA is seeking industry feedback on “innovative acquisition methods or contract vehicles” that could be used to speed up the procurement process of making Golden Dome a reality. The agency wants industry to point out changes needed to “reduce timelines and avoid delays” and “obstacles in regulations or policies that impede going ‘fast’ and recommended mitigations.”
More specifically, MDA is seeking “innovative missile defense system technologies, architectures, and concepts to demonstrate and field rapid hypersonic defense capabilities applicable to both regional and homeland defense.” Those capabilities should include, but are not limited to “near-term, innovative, and disruptive hypersonic defense capabilities across the missile defense kill chain (Left of Launch through Missile Defeat) including sensors and effectors.”
The deadline for submitting feedback is Friday. So for a few more days, MDA will revert to the initiative’s previous name.
“Since the RFI will close in less than a week, our drop boxes and other related items will remain as ‘Iron Dome for America,’” MDA stated.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com