Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Notable · Needs Congress

Invest in directed energy and space-based missile defense

Partially done

127 4. Department of Defense

“Invest in future advanced missile defense technologies like directed energy or space-based missile defense that could defend against more numerous missile threats.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The FY2026 NDAA funds the supporting technology base - Directed Energy Technology at $92,331,000, High Energy Laser Advanced Component Development and Prototype at $5,589,000, Ballistic Missile Defense System Space Programs at $97,061,000, plus $2,976,000 of directed energy procurement - and sec. 1652 requires annual reporting on the Golden Dome architecture. Investment is under way; nothing has been fielded.

  2. Partially done

    Section 20003(a) of the reconciliation act (P.L. 119-21) funded both technologies the Quote names: $250,000,000 for development and testing of directed energy capabilities by the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, and $5,600,000,000 for development of space-based and boost phase intercept capabilities - the largest single line in the section - alongside $500,000,000 for national security space launch infrastructure.

  3. Attempted

    Executive Order 14186 (The Iron Dome for America, later Golden Dome) directs an architecture for defense of the homeland against peer, near-peer and rogue missile threats, which is the policy under which space-based interception becomes a program rather than a study. A directive with nothing built yet.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Three-step sequence, one event per step, each dated from its own instrument: directive, appropriation, authorization. Requires-Congress ask; partial, the rung for an ask enacted in part.

  • Shares its first event with #265 (done), which measures the policy change rather than the investment. Kept separate because the Quote here is about investing in the technologies, which is what the reconciliation money does.
Action
create
Object
directed energy and space-based missile defense
ID
266