Donald Trump has promised that the futuristic Golden Dome defense system will be "fully operational" by the end of his presidency.
Having promised an initial investment of $25 billion, the US president estimates the total cost will be around $175 billion, but officials warn that the final bill could be at least three times that.
The plans encompass a network of "next-generation" technology on land, at sea and in space - crucially including interceptors and sensors in space, aimed at deflecting incoming missiles.
Golden Dome will expand and build on existing systems to protect against increasingly sophisticated aerial threats from countries such as Russia and China.
How would the Golden Dome work?
Trump's plan is partly inspired by Israel's Iron Dome, which uses radar-based defense systems to intercept short-range missile threats and has been in service since 2011.
The Golden Dome, however, would be many times larger and designed to combat a wider range of threats.
It would use a network of potentially hundreds of satellites, which would have been unsustainably expensive in the past, but is a more practical option today.
"Ronald Reagan wanted it years ago, but they didn't have the technology," Trump said, referring to the space-based missile defense system, popularly called "Star Wars," that the former president proposed in the 1980s.
The gold dome will "even be able to intercept missiles fired from the other side of the world or launched from space," Trump added.
It would be built to defend against cruise and ballistic missiles (including hypersonic weapons, those that can travel faster than sound) and fractional orbital bombardment systems, also known as FoBs, which can launch warheads from space.
The senior director of the US Center for Cyber and Technology Innovation, retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, told the BBC that Golden Dome would rely on "three or four groups of satellites that together amount to hundreds of satellites".
"You have satellites doing detection, several hundred of them, detecting various launches."
“Then you have a sequence that monitors and resolves fire control.
"And then you have combat satellites, which carry kinetic weapons or whatever you use to shoot down enemy missiles," he told Newsday.
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Can the Golden Dome be built in three years?
Shashank Joshi, defense editor at The Economist, told the BBC that the US military would take this plan very seriously, but that it was unrealistic to believe it could be completed during Trump's term, and the huge costs would suck up a huge chunk of the US defense budget.
Former Admiral Montgomery agrees.
"This is a five-year, seven-year, ten-year mission if you want to do it right."
"In three years, will there be things that will make us safer?"
"Rest assured," he said, but added that a "100 percent secure system" is not sustainable for the rest of Trump's term.
The US government's Congressional Budget Office, which is tasked with providing objective economic analysis to Congress, has suggested that costs could rise to as much as $542 billion over a 20-year period for parts of the system in space alone.
Who will build the Golden Dome?
US Space Force General Michael Gatlin is the man in charge of leading the multi-billion dollar Golden Dome project.
Since December 2023, he has been the vice president of space operations for the Space Force, a branch of the US military that provides "missile warning, space domain intelligence, positioning, navigation and timing, communications, and space electronic warfare."
Gatlin, a four-star general who President Trump described as a "very talented man," brings significant space and missile reconnaissance experience to the position, having previously served as head of Space Systems Command and director of Remote Sensing Systems.
Born and raised in the US state of Oklahoma, Gatlin joined the US Air Force in 1991 after graduating from Oklahoma State University.
What do Russia and China think about the Golden Dome?
The purpose of the Golden Dome is primarily to protect against missiles fired by Russia and China.
A briefing document recently released by the Defense Intelligence Agency notes that missile threats will "expand in scale and sophistication," while both countries are reportedly actively designing systems "that will exploit gaps" in U.S. defenses.
Both China and Russia have criticized the concept as "deeply destabilizing."
The new defense system "explicitly allows for a significant increase in the arsenal for conducting combat operations in space," the Kremlin said in a statement released after talks between Russia and China earlier this month.
However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently described the plan as a "sovereign issue" for the US, and suggested it could lead to the resumption of nuclear arms talks.
Meanwhile, China said the plan would threaten international security by increasing the militarization of deep space and risking an arms race.
The Golden Dome "openly proposes a massive increase in the capability to wage war in deep space... and possesses aspects that are explicitly offensive in nature, contrary to the peaceful uses defined in the Outer Space Treaty," a State Department spokesman said on May 21, calling on the US to abandon the system.
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Will Canada join the Golden Dome system?
Trump also said that Canada had asked to be part of the Golden Dome system.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's office announced that he and his ministers discussed new security and economic relations with their American counterparts.
"These discussions naturally include strengthening NORAD (North American Aerospace Command) and are linked to initiatives like Golden Shield," he added.
During a visit to Washington earlier this year, then-Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair confirmed that Canada was interested in participating in the dome project, claiming that it "made sense" and was in the country's "national interest."
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