Administration officials are reportedly making preparations to offer large parcels of as-yet unused land belonging to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in Southern California with the aim of funding the “Golden Dome” missile defense effort promoted by President Donald Trump.
According to NBC News, Navy Secretary John Phelan visited the 125,000-acre facility last week and surveyed possible areas that could be offered up for lease by commercial entities. Officials told the network that the Pentagon’s plans would involve areas that the Marine Corps “rarely” uses.
The sprawling base, located around 40 miles from San Diego, is headquarters for the 1 Marine Expeditionary Unit among other elements of the Marine Corps, with around 70,000 Marines and civilians using the facility on a daily basis.
The Marine Corps’ own website states that the facility “has been the largest employer in North San Diego County for more than 60 years” and houses over 38,000 families.
It also includes what the Corps describes as “the largest undeveloped portion of coastline in Southern California” including “beaches, bluffs, mesas, canyons, mountains and Southern California’s only free-flowing river” with “more than 1,000 species of plants, fish and animals” on base.
Lt. Cmdr. Courtney Williams, a Navy public affairs officer representing Phelan, said in a statement that the Navy Secretary’s visit to Camp Pendleton included “initial conversations about possible commercial leasing opportunities” by the Department of Defense.
“These opportunities are being evaluated to maximize value and taxpayer dollars while maintaining mission readiness and security. No decisions have been made and further discussions are needed,” she added.
The leasing plans under discussion would reportedly fund what Trump and his administration have dubbed the “Golden Dome for America” missile defense shield.
The president announced the plan for a space-based missile defense system in May, more than four decades after President Ronald Reagan’s widely derided “Star Wars” ballistic missile barrier was rolled out amidst tensions with the Soviet Union.
Trump is reviving the Pentagon’s efforts to protect the continental United States from foreign projectiles with a massive shield he has compared to Israel’s Iron Dome system, though what the president proposes would be far more expensive and complex.
Speaking in the Oval Office alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump said the U.S. now has the technology to construct a system to combat not just the intercontinental ballistic missiles that were the subject of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative — nicknamed “Star Wars” — but also against space-based and hypersonic missiles.
“In the campaign, I promised the American people that I would build a cutting edge missile defense shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attack, and that’s what we’re doing today,” said Trump, who added that he was “pleased to announce” that the U.S. has settled on an “architecture” for a “state of the art system” he promised would “deploy next-generation technologies across the land, sea and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors.”
The president said the proposed system would “integrate with our existing defense capabilities” and would be fully operational by the end of his term in January 2029. He also said it would provide an umbrella of protection for the U.S. and Canada for all manner of modern threats.
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” spending legislation included nearly $25 billion for the proposed system, but experts say it will cost far more than that, including outpacing the $175 billion estimated by the White House.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the plan to use space-based interceptors to bring down ballistic and hypersonic missiles targeted at the United States could have a price tag as high as $542 billion.
