An ambitious plan to beef up the nation’s defense against emerging missile threats – one that builds on some of north Alabama’s signature strengths — now has a price tag and a schedule.

President Donald Trump said Monday that the first $25 billion for his “Golden Dome” for America project would be funded in next year’s budget. He said he hoped the $175 billion effort would be in place by the end of his term.

“We’ll have it done in three years,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world.”

Though details are all but nonexistent, building out new missile defense programs and expanding existing ones would likely boost Huntsville, which is home to numerous missile and space-focused firms, including all the legacy prime contractors as well as defense-focused startups.

Experts have cast doubts on Trump’s timeline and budget for full implementation.

In an executive order issued in late January, Trump outlined a vision of a national missile defense program with a special emphasis on space-based programs.

Trump’s order borrowed its name from Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense program, a joint U.S.-Israeli venture designed to defend against relatively short-range rockets, missiles, and large drones. The name was changed to “Golden Dome” shortly after the announcement.

In contrast to the Israeli model, the United States has spent decades – and billions of dollars — developing missile defense at a larger scale: multi-layered systems designed to counter medium- and long-range ballistic missiles.

Trump’s executive order seems designed to further advance those efforts – with a larger emphasis on space-based capabilities and methods to counter emerging, hypersonic threats.

Many of the nation’s prime defense contractors voiced early support for Golden Dome, which would likely entail massive investment into both research and production of missile-defense capabilities. Several of those companies have significant operations in north Alabama related to missile defense and adjacent technologies.

The Missile Defense Agency at Redstone Arsenal invited contractors in February to share “innovative technologies” around points made in Trump’s executive order. They include development and deployment of:

• Space-based interceptors capable of boost-phase intercept
• Capabilities to defeat missile attacks prior to launch
• A secure supply chain for components with next-generation security and resilience features

Boost-phase interception, in particular, is considered a heavy technical lift that is beyond current capabilities. The concept itself also faces significant political and practical hurdles.

In a public statement shortly after the January announcement, Laura Grego, research director and senior scientist for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called Golden Dome, “a fantasy.”

Proposals for space-based missile defenses, “have repeatedly been abandoned because they are expensive, very technically challenging, and readily defeated,” she wrote. “Trump’s idea of a space-based missile defense is a bad investment.”