Golden Dome Marks A Moment Of Truth For Military Tech Firms

BusinessAerospace & DefenseGolden Dome Marks A Moment Of Truth For Military Tech FirmsByWilliam Hartung,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I am a defense analyst, and cover the economics of Pentagon spending.Follow AuthorMay 25, 2026, 07:21am EDTWASHINGTON, DC - MAY 20: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in front of a map of Trump's proposed "Golden Dome" missile defense system in the Oval Office at the White House on May 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Trump announced his plans for the "Golden Dome," a national ballistic and cruise missile defense system. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Getty ImagesThe leaders of the military tech sector I Silicon Valley and beyond are nothing if not self-assured, confident that they can achieve capabilities never before accomplished at costs that are lower than their competitors in the legacy defense firms like Lockheed and RTX. There is some evidence to support their views, like Space-X’s displacement of Boeing and Lockheed Martin as the primary supplier of space launch services for the U.S. military, or the potential for drones to provide air combat capability at a lower cost than an air fleet composed mostly of complex piloted aircraft like the F-35.Anduril founder Palmer Luckey took these arguments to an optimistic extreme when he told an interviewer for CNBC that if the Pentagon stopped buying the wrong things the United States could be defended with a Pentagon budget of $500 billion per year, one half of current levels and one-third of the Trump administration’s latest budget request for the department. To be exact he said the following:“We need to get our act together so that we can get everything that currently costs $1.5 trillion for well under a trillion dollars,” he said. “I would love to see a sub $500 billion defense budget if it’s getting us the things that we need.” Perhaps so, but a cut of that magnitude cannot be achieved by...