Executive Order 14186 told the Pentagon to build a "Golden Dome for America" — a layered shield against ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles. Congress backed it with $13.4 billion in the FY2026 defense appropriations bill, and the Pentagon now pegs the full architecture at $175–185 billion. But no interceptor has been selected, and the White House itself concedes the CBO's lifecycle estimate could run past $1 trillion. That timeline mismatch is the trade: you cannot intercept what you cannot see, so the government is funding detection, tracking, and command-and-control years before it funds a single kill vehicle. Money is already moving through that front door — the Space Development Agency's Tranche 3 Tracking Layer and Space Force space-domain-awareness buys are real, awarded contracts, not press-release vaporware.