President Donald Trump announced Tuesday the concept he wants for his future Golden Dome missile defense program — a multilayered $175 billion system that for the first time will put U.S. weapons in space.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said he expects the system will have the capability of intercepting missiles “even if they are launched from space.”

The president said the system will also protect Canada and it will be “fully operational before the end of my term,” which ends in 2029. It’s likelier that the complex system may have some initial capability by that point, a U.S. official familiar with the program said.

Trump also announced that Gen. Michael Guetlein, who currently serves as the vice chief of space operations, will be responsible for overseeing Golden Dome’s progress.

Golden Dome is envisioned to include ground- and space-based capabilities that are able to detect and stop missiles at all four major stages of a potential attack: detecting and destroying them before a launch, intercepting them in their earliest stage of flight, stopping them midcourse in the air, or halting them in the final minutes as they descend toward a target.

Robert Beletic, aerospace and defense industry manager for the Office of Economic Development and International Trade, previously told the Gazette that Colorado could see significant investment from the project.

Colorado companies build many different types of satellites, command and control systems and quantum sensing and quantum communication, Beletic said, among many other technologies that could be used in the new missile defense architecture. Quantum sensing collects data at the atomic level and quantum communication is far more secure than traditional methods.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colorado Springs, celebrated the announcement in a post on X.

“President Trump’s Golden Dome for America will be a generational leap in missile defense for the homeland — built on the back of space-based technologies developed in Colorado.”

For the past several months, Pentagon planners have been developing options — which a U.S. official described as medium, high and “extra high” choices, based on their cost — that include space-based interceptors. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to detail plans that have not been made public. The difference in the three versions is largely based on how many satellites and sensors — and for the first time, space-based interceptors — would be purchased.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated this month that just the space-based components of the Golden Dome could cost as much as $542 billion over the next 20 years. Trump has requested an initial $25 billion for the program in his proposed tax break bill now moving through Congress.

The Pentagon has warned for years that the newest missiles developed by China and Russia are so advanced that updated countermeasures are necessary. Golden Dome’s added satellites and interceptors — where the bulk of the program’s cost is — would be focused on stopping those advanced missiles early on or in the middle of their flight.

The space-based weapons envisioned for Golden Dome “represent new and emerging requirements for missions that have never before been accomplished by military space organizations,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, head of the U.S. Space Force, told lawmakers at a hearing Tuesday.

China and Russia have put offensive weapons in space, such as satellites with abilities to disable critical U.S. satellites, which can make the U.S. vulnerable to attack.

Last year the U.S. said Russia was developing a space-based nuclear weapon that could loiter in space for long durations, then release an burst that would take out satellites around it. Trump said he had not yet spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the program, “but at the right time, we will,” he told reporters at the White House.

But there’s no money for the Golden Dome project yet, and the program overall is “still in the conceptual stage,” newly confirmed Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told senators Tuesday.

While the president picked the concept he wanted, the Pentagon is still developing the requirements that Golden Dome will need to meet — which is not the way new systems are normally developed.

The Pentagon and U.S. Northern Command are still drafting what is known as an initial capabilities document, the U.S. official said. That is how Northern Command, which is responsible for homeland defense, identifies what it will need the system to do.

Many of the early new systems are expected to come from existing production lines. Attendees at the press conference named L3Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, and RTX Corp., formerly Raytheon, as potential contractors for the massive project. Trump also committed to building the whole project in the U.S.

Lawmakers from North Dakota, Alaska and Indiana were present during the news conference to cheer the project. Trump also expected Florida and Georgia would benefit. Colorado was not mentioned.

“The new autonomous space-age defense ecosystem is more about Silicon Valley than it is about ‘big metal,’” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said, at the White House event. “So what’s exciting about this is it makes it available to everybody to participate — to compete.”

The Gazette’s Mary Shinn contributed to this report.