President Donald Trump is hoping for a spectacular display of military strength as a testament to his administration’s successes ahead of the 2028 presidential elections.
The White House is looking to schedule its first major tests of the highly ambitious, space-based “Golden Dome” defense system for the weeks leading up to those polls, CNN reported Friday.
While it’s not uncommon for such tests to be scheduled years in advance, a defense official told the network that the deadline suggests the Trump administration “want a win to point to in November [2028].”
Whether it’s a gamble that’ll pay off nevertheless remains an open question. The Pentagon has already spent decades exploring how to facilitate missile interceptions from beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, and three years represents an aggressively short period of time in which to solve what the official said remains even now a “hard problem, and technically very risky.”
“The possible number of satellites needed to achieve a probability of engagement success is going to be very high, given the time and area needed to cover the continental United States,” they said.
Space Force General Michael Guetlein, whom Trump has appointed to oversee development of the new system, has previously explained the challenge lies in not only determining how exactly to build a space-based interceptor, but also how to upscale the system while preserving its functionality.
“That technology exists, I believe,” he told a space industry summit last week. “What we have not proven is, first, can I do it economically, and then second, can I do it at scale? Can I build enough satellites to get after the threat? Can I expand the industrial base fast enough to build those satellites?”
Industry titans like SpaceX, Anduril and Palantir are already in talks with the Pentagon on how to deliver on the program, which Trump has said would be allocated with $25 billion from his “Big, Beautiful Bill” spending package even as experts say the final price tag is more likely to run upward of at least several hundred billion dollars.
Why the Trump administration would need a big “win” ahead of Nov. 2028 is also likely to provoke concern among the president’s political opponents, given debate among some of his allies, like former MAGA strategist Steve Bannon and Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles, over constitutional changes or reinterpretations that might allow the already two-term-serving president to run for a third.
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