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Nayan Seth

US President Donald Trump’s ambitious plan to build a national missile defence system, dubbed the “Golden Dome”, may not be able to fully protect America but could accelerate the global arms race involving China, Russia and North Korea, according to experts.
“If we expand these missile defences further, we can expect additional responses,” said Steve Fetter, a professor at the University of Maryland.
Speaking during a discussion at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday, Fetter noted that the current expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, including the estimated construction of 350 new missile silos, has been motivated “at least in part” by US missile defences.
“It’s not clear that, at the end of the day, we will be any less vulnerable to a nuclear attack after these actions and reactions,” he added.
Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in the Foreign Policy programme at Brookings, also emphasised that deploying a missile defence tends to “run the risk of creating an arms race”.
“Because whoever is having the defence deployed against them tends to overestimate, and whoever is building the defence tends to compensate in the other way,” he said.
“When you do the math, you never quite think you have enough defence against the other side’s offence.”


Their assessments were in line with a report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in May, which said that while the Golden Dome would be “far more capable” than the current US defences, “it would not be an impenetrable shield or be able to fully counter a large attack of the sort that Russia or China might be able to launch”.
Trump signed an executive order in January last year aimed at creating a “next-generation missile defence shield” to deter and defend the country’s citizens and critical infrastructure against “any foreign aerial attack” and “guarantee its secure second-strike capability”.
“The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States,” it said.
Without mentioning Russia or China, the order cited threats from “next-generation strategic weapons” by “peer and near-peer adversaries”.
In May 2025, Trump said that his administration had officially selected “an architecture for this state-of-the-art system” that would deploy “next-generation technologies across the land, sea, and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors”.
“This design for the Golden Dome will integrate with our existing defence capabilities and should be fully operational before the end of my term. So we’ll have it done in about three years,” he promised.
The Pentagon created a dedicated “Golden Dome for America” office in July last year, led by General Mike Guetlein following his confirmation by the Senate.
Last week, Guetlein announced the establishment of the “Golden Dome for America Ecosystem Hub” (the Hub), a digital platform to streamline collaboration between the Department of Defence and the commercial technology sector.
“To defeat a new generation of sophisticated, manoeuvring aerial threats, we must build a defensive shield that adapts faster than the adversary,” Guetlein said.

The CBO also estimated that the Golden Dome project would cost about US$1.2 trillion to “develop, deploy, and operate for 20 years”. However, Guetlein put the figure at US$185 billion over the next decade.
“It’s unclear what they’re building for Golden Dome within the office,” said David Mosher, the CBO’s director of national security analysis, during the Brookings discussion.
He clarified that the CBO’s cost estimates were based on Trump’s executive order from last year “because no one really knows what they’re building yet”.
Analysts also questioned the administration’s plans to deploy space-based interceptors to shoot down incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), arguing that the move would be counterproductive and intensify the arms race.
“You might need dozens or hundreds of interceptors in space to have one in the right place,” O’Hanlon said.
According to Fetter, more than a thousand space-based interceptors would be needed just to “take one shot at one missile”.
“And if you want to take two shots, which would be prudent, or three, then you need 2,000 or 3,000,” he noted.
“The cost of that is going to be vastly greater than the cost for Russia or China to deploy an additional missile, and so I think it’s easy to see how this would lead to an arms race.”
The CBO estimates that out of the US$1.2 trillion price tag, the space-based interceptor layer would account for about 70 per cent of acquisition expenses and 60 per cent of the total costs.


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Experts warn Trump’s missile defence plan could fuel an arms race while leaving the America vulnerable to a large-scale attack


Experts warn Trump’s missile defence plan could fuel an arms race while leaving the America vulnerable to a large-scale attack.


Golden Dome may not fully protect US from Chinese and Russian threats, experts say

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Experts warn Trump’s missile defence plan could fuel an arms race while leaving the America vulnerable to a large-scale attack

Experts warn Trump’s missile defence plan could fuel an arms race while leaving the America vulnerable to a large-scale attack