On 27 January 2025, President Trump signed an executive order (EO) 14186 entitled An Iron Dome for America now dubbed Golden Dome. In theory, Golen Dome will provide a future integrated air and missile defence (IAMD) shield for the United States focused on the lower forty-eight states and Alaska.[1] The plan is very ambitious. The President desires it to be functional in three years time at a cost of US $175 billion. The system must counter ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks across all flight phases and using various launch platforms. Golden Dome is intended to include space-based components that will detect and track missiles as well as host space-based intercept capabilities that would defeat missiles at the boost and mid-course phases with other systems targeting at launch. Golden Dome will also include land and maritime-based components to serve as the final safety net for “leakers” destined for North America. Ideally, many detection and defeat systems in North America will be linked with systems around the world in layers so that missiles can be defeated as far away from North America as possible.
Canada was invited on Truth Social on 27 May 2025 to join Golden Dome for free as the 51st US state or else pay $61 billion US. The “invitation” to join an ambitious, partly theoretical system that will protect only the United States seems derisory especially given Canada-US ongoing trade disputes. But the system’s end goal is important given recent technology that has increased the reach and lethality of missile systems. Trump’s demands that allies do “more” by way of defence readiness and spending of resources coupled with the new threat environment have forced Canada to review long-held “truisms” of Canadian defence that must change.
Central to Golden Dome is IAMD. Canada’s 2024 defence update hinted that IAMD was coming[2] and on 16 July 2025, Canada’s Minister of Defence David McGuinty quietly noted that Canada would explore air and missile defence capabilities. The focus on IAMD suggests a new age of missile defence (of all variants) for Canada is coming but details and specific capabilities are few.
Why a Golden Dome?
Great power adversaries Russia and China have the technology to hit targets anywhere in North America. The threat complexity has increased to include advanced long-range cruise missiles, a range of Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) threats, hypersonic weapons, intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles as well as the potential for fractional orbital bombardment systems that can reach North America in minutes depending on their launch sites which can be based on land, in the air, undersea or on the water. Most could be fitted with conventional or nuclear weapons.
Even though North America faces considerable and daily cyber threats as well as foreign interference threats, Golden Dome is focused on missiles and other air threats and to intercept them at all stages from launch to impact. While Golden Dome is described as a defensive system, adversaries will describe Golden Dome as an aggressive attempt to escalate an arms race.
Figure 1: Missile Threats to North America
Found at: https://www.dia.mil/Portals/110/Documents/News/golden_dome.pdf
Golden Dome will be a system of systems providing layers of defence that includes many detection and defeat platforms. The goal is to protect certain critical civilian infrastructure (such as ports, electrical grids and rail links captured in a critical asset list) and defence infrastructure (like ammunition depots and bases) that are designated on the US defended asset list (DAL). Golden Dome will not be able to provide perfect coverage of the entirety of North America; it will be limited to the continental United States although systems protecting Hawaii currently are highly likely to be connected. Golden Dome will integrate ground, air, maritime and eventually space detection systems with ground, air, maritime and space defeat systems. Some of these missions are the domain of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), some the US Army, some the US Navy or Coast Guard and some US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and other combatant commands and the missions do not always match who owns the assets. For example, in the case of the NORAD, most of its critical capabilities are transferred (“choped” – CHhange of OPerational control) from Canada and the United States to NORAD. Ideally, these organizations and systems will be integrated to defeat air and missiles threats to the United States and North America by extension. In other words, Golden Dome is a manifestation of IAMD.
IAMD and Golden Dome
NATO has one of the most comprehensive definitions of what IAMD entails:
Integrated Air and Missile Defence (NATO IAMD) is an essential and continuous mission in peacetime, crisis and conflict, safeguarding and protecting Alliance territory, populations and forces against any air or missile threat or attack. This mission is conducted with a 360-degree approach and tailored to address all air and missile threats, emanating from all strategic directions, and coming from both state and non-state actors. To that end, it incorporates all measures – such as 24/7 air policing and ballistic missile defence – to contribute to deterring any air and missile threat, or to nullify or reduce their effectiveness…”.
In other words, IAMD is what allies want to have, and it involves many different systems and missions. IAMD links separate systems in the various domains (from sea to space) to achieve joint all-domain command and control in a system of systems. This means that a state or group of states (NATO for example) can detect, track and defeat any air or missile threat launched from anywhere in the world destined for particular targets. Golden Dome will be the United States’ continental IAMD system.
The fact is, Canada has been implicated in IAMD as a function of NATO policy and NORAD (in practice) for decades not to mention via contributions by Canadian industries, Canada’s Space Agency, and Defence Research and Development Canada.
The Canadian problem is that NATO IAMD is not focused on Canada and its systems are immature and not yet integrated – they involve many separate activities for particular threats in specific domains that together (charitably) can achieve air and missile defence but not within one chain of command. For example, NATO is focused particularly on Russian missile attacks on its eastern flank and is highly dependent on individual national systems. A NATO IAMD Policy Committee is reviewing systems, gaps and options. But NATO’s IAMD focus is knitting future European capabilities together.
NORAD is another story. NORAD missions represent a component of IAMD, but its integration into an integrated system of systems within a single chain of command vital for IAMD does not exist yet. NORAD, for example warns of certain incoming missiles and air threats but does not have the mandate to defeat ballistic missiles.
Israel possesses the most advanced IAMD system that has been deployed on many occasions. Israel’s Iron Dome is a connected system of systems. Israel’s 10 Iron Dome batteries can cover approximately 150 km (or the approximate size of Lake Erie) to guard against missiles launched from short ranges. Israel also has other systems (David’s Sling, Arrow System, and THAAD), which together protect 9,402,617 people and 21,937 sq km of land.
Golden Dome will be the United States’ IAMD for its lower forty-eight states and Alaska, but it is at a scale and scope never deployed and there are many technological, budgetary and competing priority challenges to overcome. Golden Dome will not be a singular, “exquisite” system that can defeat any threat with 100% coverage and accuracy. No system can, but as missile systems become more accurate and lethal, such a system is warranted despite the lack of full coverage. While similarities to Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) (colloquially called Start Wars) are raised, SDI was primarily a research and development program to intercept and defeat Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. One of its proposals, called Brilliant Pebbles, was to deploy thousands of small, autonomous satellites (the pebbles) to orbit Earth, detect enemy missiles, and intercept them in space. Golden Dome builds on this and other research as well as current and future systems to potentially achieve the first-ever space-based interceptors.
As important as Golden Dome’s defeat weapons will be, there are command and control issues to sort out, supply chain concerns, new sensors to be networked, more interagency coordination and better domain awareness required not to mention potential assistance from partners including Canada. This will not be a one and done system but rather will be built over time with mainly “off the shelf” options (systems already tested and operational) integrated with existing missions performed by NORAD as well as Aegis, THAAD, and Patriot systems, not to mention ground, air, maritime and space-based sensors, radars and satellites. But this presupposes a careful analysis of what targets need to be protected and the potential trade-offs for targets that cannot be protected. The current budget estimate is $US 175 billion but this is not likely to be the total amount given the ambitious intent of the US President and the fact that as adversaries change their weapons systems, changes will need to be made to Golden Dome.
Canada, IAMD, and Golden Dome
Canada, as a function of NORAD’s aerospace warning mission, is engaged in the detection of air-breathing and ballistic missile threats to North America. NORAD’s control mission provides assets to defeat fixed wing and cruise missile attacks. As such, given the status quo, Canada would be part of Golden Dome whether formally included or not. The reasons are two-fold. First, as a function of Canada’s geography and the fact that the fastest avenue of approach to hit US-based targets is over Canada’s Arctic, the North Warning System (a series of short and long-range radar systems) and future over the horizon radar (OTHR) systems (especially a potential Polar variant) will provide essential domain awareness data.[3] The United States is also considering new OTHR systems, and one can surmise Pituffik Space Base in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) might be a likely spot to host a future system.
Second, because of NORAD’s three mission sets – aerospace warning and control and maritime warning – NORAD is responsible for detecting and defeating air threats to North America that include fighters, bombers, cruise missiles (whether air or sea launched), and intercontinental cruise missiles. What NORAD is not mandated to do is defeat incoming ballistic missiles and it struggles to deal with UAS given current sensors. Canada’s “no” in 2005 to participate in the US Ground-Based Midcourse Missile Defense System (GMD) optimized to defeat an incoming North Korean missile meant that NORAD warns of the incoming missile but has no say or role to play in its defeat. This rests with US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM).
General Guillot, Commander of USNORTHCOM and NORAD (2024 – present) envisages three domes that would make up the Golden Dome for America: a domain-awareness dome, an air dome (for aircrafts, UAS, cruise missiles), and an ICBM dome.[4] Problematic is the place of hypersonics. They might reside in the ICBM dome as they are launched by ballistic missiles. But, once they enter the atmosphere in the glide mode, they engage the air domain, Whereas NORAD currently has no role in the ICBM dome, it does in the air dome. In other words, NORAD should be integrated into Golden Dome given the US military’s 2022 goal of Joint All Domain Command and Control or JADC2.
In addition to the sensors Canada hosts for NORAD (and potentially for Golden Dome), national land-based defeat capabilities (like ground-based air interceptors, and air-to-air and ground-to air systems) will be needed to protect Canada’s national defended asset list and to protect people and infrastructure at international events like the upcoming FIFA World Cup in 2026. The Canadian Army used to have tactical air defence anti-tank systems known as ADATS acquired in 1989 and last used to provide protection from potential air threats during the G8 summit in Alberta in 2002, given up in 2012. Delivery of ground-based air defence systems are needed urgently but of limited value in terms of Golden Dome’s ultimate goal.
The Royal Canadian Navy is also acquiring Aegis combat systems on the new River-Class Destroyer so that they will have integrated air and missile defence for a task group, but these capabilities are intended for expeditionary missions not necessarily homeland defence. More details are needed.
Canada has the option of refusing to be part of Golden Dome which would result in the United States deploying OTHR and land-based defeat capabilities near the CANUS border, violating Canadian airspace as necessary. Nancy Teeple reviewed some of the costs and lost opportunities in a 2020 analysis related to only ballistic missile defence but her warnings are worth revisiting including reputational considerations and especially the financial costs of going it alone. The United States might also consider walking away from NORAD insisting Golden Dome would take over the warning and defeat functions of NORAD but this unilateral approach would fly in the face of the original logic that led to the creation of NORAD in 1957.[5]
Since Golden Dome is an American system, it does not need to protect Canada but given that many of the largest population centres on both sides of the border are within 100kms of the other, Canada is likely to have tangential benefits even if formal coverage is not negotiated – there are a least a few critical infrastructure in common in the US and Canadian defended asset lists. There are, after all, critical civilian infrastructure (such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, rail and electrical grids) that are in Canada but are vital to the United States.
Canada also has physical space to host systems and important R&D enablers in the form of engineers, academics, and researchers. But of course, this should include consultations with provincial, territorial leaders and indigenous rights holders.
The Canadian IAMD door was opened a crack in Our North Strong and Free (ONSAF) but the announcement by Minister of Defence McGuinty announcing that Canada “has removed all restrictions on air and missile defence of Canada” on 16 July 2025 opens it widely for Canadian-US negotiations.
Conclusion
The United States has an overly ambitious timeline and many engineering issues to solve. Golden Dome poses several conundrums including potential implications for the US’ second-strike posture, impacts to the ballooning debt, and continued Congressional support pending the outcome of the mid-term and future elections. USNORTHCOM will be seized of the Golden Dome issue, but it is also overwhelmed by operations on the southern border and defense support of civil authorities (i.e. natural disaster assistance). In the meantime, however, NORAD modernization projects need to continue apace, whether formally part of Golden Dome or not. The importance of NORAD modernization remains regardless of President Trump’s priorities.
IAMD is the future for all militaries and Canada is implicated already as a member of NATO and NORAD. The notion that Canada is “fireproof” or covered by US systems is specious. Canada needs national IAMD ideally linked with Golden Dome. Canada can no longer be protected by platforms operational in only one domain for specific threats.
[1] Hawaii will be protected by existing and potentially future systems located in Asia-Pacific. With the change in USNORTHCOM’s AOR, any coverage for Greenland is an open question.
[2] “To complement and build on investments already made under our NORAD modernization plan, we will further explore Canada’s integrated air and missile defence capabilities. This more robust approach to integrated air and missile defence will have significant benefits across all theatres in which Canada operates and strengthens our contribution to collective security.” p. xi.
[3] While Canada’s Arctic OTHR is essential for the NORAD mission it will not “see” as far as will the Polar OTHR.
[4] Jason, Sherman (2025), “NORTHCOM proposes ‘Three-Dome’ domestic air and missile defense architecture”, Inside Defense (9 April).
[5] Andrea Charron and James Fergusson (2023), NORAD: In Perpetuity and Beyond. McGill-Queen’s University, Press.
The author would like to thank James Fergusson, Lance Blyth, Bruce Ploughman and Chris Morrison and anonymous reviewers at CDAI for their helpful comments. All errors and omissions are those of the author.
Dr. Charron is the Director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies and Professor in Political Studies at the University of Manitoba.
The views expressed in this op-ed are the author’s/authors’ own and do not necessarily represent those of the Institute or its staff.
