FEATURED · GOLDEN DOME FOR AMERICA
CARES DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE · ANALYTICAL BRIEF
The Golden Dome cost meter — priced by the foot.
Move the dial. Read the price. From $24 billion enacted to CBO's $1.2 trillion twenty-year estimate. Every setting recomputes cost per square foot, per person, per taxpayer, and per household — live.
FOR SCALE
How the meter's cost per square foot lands against real estate you know — Manhattan to West Virginia — plus a US aircraft carrier deck, common flooring, a foreign missile defense benchmark, and a first-class stamp.
MOST EXPENSIVE MARKET
NYC Manhattan
$1,500/ft² · Median residential (Redfin Q1 2026, ~$1,440/ft² rounded).
CHEAPEST STATE
West Virginia
$104/ft² · $177,887 median ÷ 1,714 ft² typical (Zillow ZHVI Q2 2026 · Experian).
AVERAGE FLOORING
Linoleum (US)
$5/ft² · Installed average (Homewyse May 2026 $4.72–$6.40 · Today's Homeowner reports $4.50 avg).
US NAVAL BENCHMARK
Coverage per Ford-class carrier
$13.3B procurement · USS Gerald R. Ford, first-in-class Ford-type supercarrier (NAVSEA · 19FortyFive Aug 2026). At the meter's current setting, one carrier equals this share of the total defended area.
FOREIGN BENCHMARK
vs Iron Dome (Israel)
2.10¢/ft² · ~$5B program ÷ 8,522 sq mi Israel land. Point defense against artillery rockets — not a strategic missile shield.
CONSUMER REFERENCE
Coverage per Forever stamp
USPS Forever stamp $0.82, effective 12 Jul 2026. Answers: how much homeland defense does one stamp buy?
Publicly cited estimates for Golden Dome for America span roughly two orders of magnitude — from the $24 billion appropriated in the FY2025 reconciliation package (P.L. 119-21, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) to the Congressional Budget Office's May 2026 estimate of $1.2 trillion for a full twenty-year architecture. Neither figure, on its own, conveys the physical or per-capita scale of what is being purchased.
Cover Charge translates each anchor into two intuitive units: cost per square foot of covered territory, and cost per person, taxpayer, and household. The intent is magnitude — a working sense of scale for use in analysis, briefings, and public communication — not fiscal projection.
START ANALYZING
BY PROGRAM COST
Jump to any of the four public cost anchors, layer on per-person, per-taxpayer, per-household views, and read the metric tiles.
Open the worksheet →BY THREAT CLASS
Four tiers — space, upper, lower, terminal — each handling a different threat class from ICBMs to UAS. What the cost buys, tier by tier.
See the layers →BY DATA PROVENANCE
Eighteen public sources — CBO, IRS, Census, CRS, USPS, NOAA — with assumptions documented. Every figure traces back.
Read the methodology →DETAILED WORKSHEET
Jump to a public estimate below to snap the meter above to that anchor. Add per-capita views to translate program cost into person, taxpayer, and household terms.
GOLDEN DOME · GDA
Current setting reflects the meter above · 4 public estimate anchors
COST PER SQUARE FOOT
—
TOTAL AREA
million sq mi
PER ACRE
43,560 sq ft
COST CURVES
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
Golden Dome is a layered system-of-systems. Each tier addresses a distinct threat class. CBO's $1.2 trillion estimate is dominated (~70%) by the space-based interceptor layer — the tier program manager Gen. Michael Guetlein has publicly indicated may not survive final design.
SPACE + UPPER TIER
Exoatmospheric parabolic trajectory. Detected by SBIRS/Next-Gen OPIR, intercepted in mid-course.
Interceptors: GBI (GMD), NGI, SM-3 Blk IIA
SPACE + LOWER TIER
Mach 5+ skip-glide in upper atmosphere. Maneuvering flight requires continuous tracking.
Interceptors: GPI, SM-6, HBTSS
LOWER TIER + TERMINAL
Low altitude, terrain-following, sub- or supersonic. Difficult radar detection.
Interceptors: PAC-3, SM-6, NASAMS, IFPC
LOWER TIER + TERMINAL
Medium-altitude (3,500–18,000 ft AGL), longer-range unmanned systems — Group III (55–1,320 lbs) up through Group V. Larger radar cross-section and higher speeds than hobbyist drones.
Interceptors: NASAMS, Coyote Blk 3, IFPC, LIDS, M-SHORAD
SCENARIO SNAPSHOTS
Each figure has a different scope. Click any card to load that anchor into the meter above.
SOURCES & DOCUMENTATION
Eighteen sources — primary or authoritative secondary reporting — retrieved September 2026.