Rep. Jeff Crank believes in the “Golden Dome” missile defense shield proposal — but worries that the U.S. risks missing its moment to pull it off as Congress awaits a blueprint from the White House.
Crank, a Colorado Republican, launched the House Golden Dome Caucus last June with Rep. Dale Strong, R-Ala., saying the caucus would serve as an “educational clearinghouse” for lawmakers and staff seeking to understand the ambitious initiative and network better with the military and industry.
He stressed that keeping to the ambitious game plan — that would have a prototype of the system ready by the end of 2028 — was critical to the success of the whole endeavor.
“Golden Dome will only be successful if we meet President Trump’s timeline,” Crank said in a statement at the time. “This means that it is imperative that we, Members and stakeholders, are well informed and working together to revolutionize missile defense of our great nation.”
In an interview with Military Times this month, Crank said he has previewed the White House’s Golden Dome architecture in a classified briefing, but still awaits delivery of the architecture in a form Congress can begin to act on — even though it was expected by the end of 2025.
“It’s certainly been frustrating,” he said.
Crank cited President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as “Star Wars,” which languished in research and concerns about immature technology and ultimately lost momentum as Reagan departed office.
“When you’re trying to prove that something is technically feasible, you have to have a timeline that you meet,” Crank said. “[President] John F. Kennedy came in [in 1962] with a timeline for us to put a man on the moon. Had he not done that, I think it would be easy for all of us to say, ‘Well, it’s just kind of too hard as a country, or we have this diversion over here or over there. And so to me, from that standpoint, we need to make sure that we’re really focused on trying to meet that deadline, but also so that we can prove that it’ll work.
“We have some proving to do,” he added.
Crank traces his own support for the Golden Dome concept back to his work in the 1990s as a staffer for the House Armed Services Committee — some three decades before he was sworn in as a member of Congress last January.
At the time, he said, the idea of shooting a missile out of the air with another missile, now a critical component of U.S. ground-based air defense, seemed like far-out science fiction. Even then, he was drawn to the vision behind SDI.
“Ronald Reagan’s dream [wa]s that there would be a shield over the United States that would protect us. And we still today hear people say, ‘Well, you know, it might not protect all of them.” Crank said. “Well, you know, if it’s your city that gets protected, that you represent — if it’s the city of Los Angeles that gets protected by a ballistic missile defense shield or a Golden Dome-like shield — is it worth it? I would say it is. And I think the residents of Los Angeles would say it is.”
Trump signed an executive order establishing the Golden Dome initiative in January 2025. In the last month-and-a-half, nearly 2,500 companies and counting have joined a contract vehicle under the Missile Defense Agency for work that could total up to $151 billion.
Speaking at the Davos World Economic Forum this week, Trump hailed the Golden Dome project, saying his designs on the Danish territory of Greenland would support the establishment of the missile shield.
But the plethora of pricey new initiatives and projects rolled out by the White House — including, most recently, the “Golden Fleet” with a new class of battleships named for Trump — have raised questions about whether momentum on already-announced projects like Golden Dome is flagging.
“It’s really the reason we formed the caucus, and we do need to get going on it,” Crank said. “It’s been a vulnerability that most Americans don’t understand that we have. But … it can’t just be an executive order. An executive order has to have money behind it; the only one that can do that is Congress.
“It’s certainly not where we want to be,” added Crank. “I’d like to be three or four months ahead of where we are right now.”
There’s another hurdle, too, that Congress has yet to take up: the thorny issue of creating policy around domestic drone flight and counter-drone defense measures, which represent one layer of the Golden Dome shield strategy.
“Congress is going to have to figure out where one authority ends for a particular agency of the government and where another one begins. And it’s very blurred right now … oftentimes, sadly, I think it takes a tragedy or an attack for us to stop and figure all that stuff out. We shouldn’t wait for that,” Crank said. “After [Sept. 11, 2001], we started figuring a whole bunch of things out that we probably should have been doing differently. And I hope that’s not the case here.”
At this point, Crank said he isn’t ruling out consideration of a scaled-back version of the Golden Dome project in order to meet Trump’s ambitious and fast-approaching deadline.
“Any improved system is better than the system that we have now,” Crank said. “But again, I think it is technically feasible.”
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