The United States has publicly acknowledged for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space, revealing a capability intended to protect American forces and counter threats from adversaries including China and Russia.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink made the disclosure Monday during the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, saying the Space Force now has weapons operating in orbit. He declined to identify the weapons, explain how they work or disclose when they were deployed.
“Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenge of evolving threats wherever they exist,” Meink said. “This is why the Space Force now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”
The announcement represents a significant shift in how openly the Pentagon is willing to discuss American military capabilities in space. U.S. officials have spent years warning that China and Russia are developing systems capable of threatening American satellites, but until Monday had not publicly acknowledged having operational U.S. weapons in orbit.
Meink said the decision to acknowledge the weapons was deliberate, although he made clear the Pentagon has no intention of revealing much more about them.
“It is critically important that we maintain our dominance, not only in the air but in space,” Meink said. “So, we’ve had to take steps to make sure that when we’re threatened, we can take care of that.”
Exactly what the new weapons can do remains classified.
A U.S. official told The Washington Post that the capability could potentially be used to take out an enemy satellite if that satellite were being used to target American troops or another U.S. satellite.
The disclosure quickly drew criticism from two of Washington’s biggest military competitors.
China's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Beijing supports the peaceful use of outer space and opposes an arms race or efforts to turn space into a battlefield.
“We urge the U.S. to stop expanding military build-up in outer space, and uphold global strategic stability with concrete actions,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said.
Russia also called for weapons to be kept out of space.
“We believe that space must be free of any weapon,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday.
Meink, however, pushed back Monday against concerns over the U.S. disclosure, pointing to the military space programs already being pursued by Beijing and Moscow.
“Is there any question in the room by anybody about whether or not the Chinese and Russians have been developing these sorts of weapons?” Meink asked reporters.
The newly disclosed weapons are separate from another major Pentagon effort that could eventually put additional military systems into orbit.
The Trump administration is developing Golden Dome, a national missile defense system expected to rely heavily on space-based sensors and potentially space-based interceptors capable of destroying missiles during flight.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in May that a national missile defense architecture broadly matching the capabilities sought under the Golden Dome initiative could cost about $1.2 trillion to develop, deploy and operate over 20 years. CBO cautioned that the Pentagon has not released enough information about Golden Dome's final architecture to calculate the actual long-term cost of the system now being planned.
For now, the details of America's already-deployed space weapons remain secret.
