Maybe Trump should go back to calling his missile shield the Iron Dome

“$10 billion in the near term, plussing up our current resources, we can spend that,” Saltzman said. “We can jump start that, and then you get into that steady state kind of growth that’s necessary to continue to add the capabilities, continue to close the programs. So that’s what we’re really trying to sell inside the department first because there’s a lot of priorities, a lot of constraints.”

Defense officials are waiting for the Trump administration to release its budget request for fiscal year 2026. For now, the White House is holding the figures close to the vest. Details of the budget proposal should reveal whether the Pentagon, and particularly the Space Force, will prevail in a climate of government downsizing.

For now, the Space Force is under a civilian hiring freeze imposed by the White House. Some military civilians took the Trump administration’s offer of early retirement, and the Space Force doesn’t have a way to replace them.

Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed military leaders to redirect 8 percent of the defense budget from “non-lethal” programs toward Trump’s priorities. Saltzman didn’t identify which programs the Space Force deemed lowest priority, but he said the savings will go into a “war chest” to shift to other missions.

“I’m very hopeful that the case that the Space Force makes means that a lot of that money will come back into our budget, and potentially, with initiatives like Golden Dome, we’ll even get more money and more resources because we play such a central role in that,” Saltzman said.

We’ll find out soon just how gilded Trump wants to make the Golden Dome. Military officials owe the White House a report on possible Golden Dome architectures at the end of this week. Presumably, we’ll see something about initial costs for the Golden Dome in the White House’s fiscal year 2026 budget request to Congress.

There’s a good chance lawmakers will conclude the government can’t afford to add any superfluous bells and whistles to the proposed missile defense shield, if it goes forward at all. Maybe, with due deference to Israel’s system, it makes sense to name something that’s supposed to save millions of lives after a stronger, more affordable metal—like iron.