US President Donald Trump has announced that the country has selected a design for the highly ambitious “Golden Dome” missile defence system, which he says will be operational before the end of his second term.

In a statement from the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump described the system as a “next-generation” national shield capable of intercepting a wide array of modern aerial threats, including ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, and warheads launched from space.

The project is inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome, a missile interception system deployed since 2011. However, the Golden Dome is intended to function on a vastly larger scale and combat a broader spectrum of threats. “There really is no current system,” Trump said. “We have certain areas of missiles and certain missile defence, but there is no system… there has never been anything like this.”

The President said the system would be a multi-domain network of technologies deployed across land, sea and space, and would include space-based sensors and interceptors. Trump declared that it world be capable of even “intercepting missiles launched from the other side of the world, or launched from space,”

Canada has reportedly expressed interest in joining the initiative, with former Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair calling it a sensible move in the country’s “national interest”. Blair highlighted the importance of Arctic surveillance and said Canada must remain alert to threats in the region.

The Golden Dome project is being championed amid mounting concern from US defence and intelligence officials over the growing sophistication of weapons systems developed by China and Russia. A recent report by the Defence Intelligence Agency warned that America’s adversaries are rapidly designing missiles specifically to bypass or exploit gaps in existing US defences.

The Pentagon has cautioned that US systems have fallen behind, especially against technologies like hypersonic glide vehicles and so-called Fractional Orbital Bombardment Systems (FOBS), which could allow warheads to be delivered from low Earth orbit.

While the project has been allocated an initial $25 billion in a new budget proposal — dubbed by Trump the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the true cost, particularly of its space-based components, could exceed $500 billion over two decades.

Chatham House defence expert Marion Messmer noted the logistical enormity of such a venture compared to existing models like Israel’s Iron Dome. “Israel’s missile defence challenge is a lot easier than one in the United States. The geography is much smaller and the angles and directions and the types of missiles are more limited,” she told The New York Times.

Space Force General Michael Guetlein has been appointed to oversee the project, which officials say will centralise missile detection and interception under a unified command structure.

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