by Wallace White
The Pentagon is pushing back the deadline for industry proposals for the Golden Dome missile defense project due to a massive surge of interest from America’s defense industrial complex, DefenseOne reported Tuesday.
“Considerable interest” from defense contractors in the Trump administration’s potential $151 billion project has spurred the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to extend the deadline for proposals, DefenseOne reported. The agency said its Sept. 10 solicitation “generated considerable interest, resulting in over 1,500 questions from industry,” according to the outlet.
“I think it’s an indication of strong industry interest, which is not surprising given the enormous amount of money already appropriated by Congress,” Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute told DefenseOne.
The Golden Dome is estimated to cost at least $175 billion, while the Trump administration is aiming to build the system in only three years. However, the enormous amount of coordination required from America’s defense industrial complex may prove to considerably blunt Trump’s ambitions, as the industry is well-known to be a slow, cumbersome force.
The most lofty estimated cost comes from the Congressional Budget Office in May, which said the massive project could cost upwards of $831 billion over 20 years. Defense giants such as L3 Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies and Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been floated as potential contractors for the project.
The Trump administration has envisioned the Golden Dome system would include sea, land, and space-based elements in order to shoot down incoming missiles. The system was conceived with the evolving threats of hypersonic missiles in mind as China and Russia both race to lead the world in the technology.
In 1984, former President Ronald Reagan established the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization within the Department of Defense. The program was intended to protect America from nuclear missile attacks. In the late 1980s, the program’s funding was cut due to the lack of technology at the time.
When former President Bill Clinton was in office, he renamed the program to Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Clinton focused the program on protecting America from missile attacks from the Middle East and North Korea. After Clinton, President George W. Bush renamed the program the Missile Defense Agency, which remains in existence today. This program creates defense tatics against potential missile attacks on America.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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Wallace White is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
