GoKawiilAir Force Secretary Troy Meink made the first public declaration Monday that the United States has placed “space control weapons” in orbit, an announcement that will surely reverberate in the power centers of Beijing and Moscow.
Space Force officials have previously expressed their interest in acquiring space-based weapons, and Pentagon leaders have become more open to discussing space warfare in recent years. Therefore, Meink’s announcement Monday at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference near Washington, DC, was not entirely unexpected.
“Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats, wherever they exist. This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action,” Meink said in prepared remarks.
Meink did not reveal any details about the weapons, but the disclosure of their existence underlines a remarkable turnaround in the Pentagon’s thinking about orbital warfare, something no senior official wanted to discuss publicly until a few years ago. Military officials recently have openly discussed orbital combat, defensive countermeasures on satellites, and a new ground-based weapon designed to disable an enemy satellite in orbit.
“There are a lot of factors that roll into how we talk about these things,” Meink said. “We spend a lot of time talking about how we’re going to talk about these things. It is important from a deterrence perspective. But on the other hand, 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, or anything else.”
Meink also did not say when the Space Force deployed the space-based weapons. The development of space technology often takes years, so it is likely the weapons program, whatever it is, spanned multiple presidential administrations.
“I would just say that the space environment is critical for military and economic security, and we need to make sure that the US can operate freely there,” Meink said.
Credit: Craig Hudson/Air and Space Forces Association Air Force Secretary Troy Meink speaks Monday at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink speaks Monday at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Credit: Craig Hudson/Air and Space Forces Association
Taking stock
The Pentagon’s acknowledgement Monday comes after US officials began highlighting Russia’s testing of an apparent anti-satellite weapon in orbit in 2020. Officials in the Biden administration accused Russia in 2024 of deploying operational anti-satellite weapons. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, revealed a US government assessment the same year that Russia might put a nuclear weapon into space. A nuclear detonation in low-Earth orbit would jeopardize thousands of commercial and military spacecraft, including Starlinks, US spy satellites, Chinese satellites, and the International Space Station.