The Department of War on Tuesday unveiled a new online website for defense companies to submit ideas and requests for information regarding the Golden Dome initiative.
The digital platform, which can be found at hub.goldendome.mil, is designed to allow traditional and nontraditional defense companies to register, upload concepts, and submit designs directly to the Golden Dome project’s decision-makers. The goal, the Pentagon said in a press release, is “bypassing months of administrative delays.”
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“To defeat a new generation of sophisticated, maneuvering aerial threats, we must build a defensive shield that adapts faster than the adversary,” Golden Dome director Gen. Michael Guetlein said. “We are doing this by cutting bureaucratic red tape, harnessing innovation through partnerships, and leveraging the true power of the Arsenal of Freedom. We are dismantling the historical walls separating commercial innovation from national defense and short-circuiting the ‘Valley of Death’ that so often stalls the deployment of critical technologies.”
He unveiled the new portal on Tuesday during a missile defense conference in Huntsville, Alabama. The Pentagon said it will give defense companies “transparent demand signals” and provide “real-time, unclassified visibility into the immediate capability gaps of the Golden Dome.”
The portal currently states “The Hub” has focus areas that include radars and advanced sensors; advanced weapons and kinetics; space systems; C2 — command and control — and battle management; communications and data transport; artificial intelligence, digital engineering, and simulation; sensors, spectrum and electronic warfare; unmanned systems and autonomy; cybersecurity; infrastructure, energy and power management; material and energetics; maritime and domain platforms.
It’s the latest move the Pentagon has made to try to reduce procurement time frames for several types of weapons and systems across the board while also encouraging the expansion of such manufacturing.
Earlier this year, Guetlein said the project would cost an estimated $185 billion, up from an earlier estimate of $175 billion. A Congressional Budget Office report from May found that the Golden Dome could cost upward of $1.2 trillion to build and operate for 20 years, an evaluation that Geutlein disputed.
The Golden Dome plan, which President Donald Trump announced last year, is designed to improve homeland defense against ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missile threats through a layered system of ground-, air-, and space-based sensors designed to detect, track, and intercept incoming projectiles.
During a congressional hearing in April, Guetlein told the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, “We have traditionally focused on the intercontinental ballistic missile threat, and have not really thought enough about the cruise missile, the hypersonic missile, the ballistic missiles from air or from sea, nor now what we are seeing the expanding counter [drone] threat.”
On Tuesday, he noted that the project could be in trouble if Congress passes a continuing resolution. Congress allocated $24 billion for the Golden Dome during fiscal 2026 as part of the reconciliation bill. For fiscal 2027, the Pentagon is seeking another $17.5 billion, which would also fall under a reconciliation bill.
GOLDEN DOME ESTIMATED TO COST $1.2 TRILLION OVER 20 YEARS: CBO
Should Congress pass a continuing resolution, it locks in funding at the prior year’s level, and because it was not part of last year’s base budget, it would not be included in it.
“A CR doesn’t help me at Golden Dome because I don’t have a top line to fall back on,” Guetlein said. “We have to figure out as a nation a different way to fund Golden Dome.… Both sides of the aisle in the House and Senate are working on how to do this in [fiscal] ’27.”
