The US Space Force finally confirmed something that the national-security establishment has been hinting at for years: it has put “military weapons” in orbit around the Earth, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink confirmed at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Monday.
“Today we are more ready than ever to face new challenges and we continue to ensure that we are doing our best to counter threats that are evolving, that are located anywhere in the world,” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said in prepared remarks at the National Harbor event. “This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”
He declined to offer any information about the on-orbit space control weapons now being deployed, including how many are involved and how long it will take for them to be deployed. He said that revealing too much information would not help to further deterrence. “Me talking about the details of what we’re doing would actually not benefit deterrence. So we’re not going to talk about the specifics of what we’re doing, whether we’ve tested it, not tested it, etc.”
The disclosure of the existence of US space control weapons in orbit marks a significant shift in US policy regarding warfare in space. For years senior Pentagon officials refused to confirm the existence of offensive and/or defensive systems in space. In recent years China and Russia have been actively testing out a range of anti-satellite systems including inspectors, ground launched ASATs and maneuvering spacecraft designed to seek out and destroy enemy satellites in orbit.
Recently Space Force leaders have detailed a growing array of defensive tools such as countermeasures, satellite-hardening techniques and ground-based systems capable of directing powerful energy at hostile spacecraft. Earlier this year the Space Force activated its first ground-based electromagnetic warfare (EMW) station, called Meadowlands, which will target enemy satellites in space.
Meink said again today that the U.S. space environment is critical for both military and economic reasons, and that the U.S. needs to be able to operate freely in that space environment.
It is also worth noting that the program is likely to have been in the works for several years, across the administrations of multiple presidents. And the announcement on Monday was aimed at two countries in particular: Beijing and Moscow. The U.S. is sending a message: Space is a warfighting domain, and the U.S. is now at war in space.
