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The US has admitted to deploying weapons in space, confirming what has long been suspected.
A Space Force spokesperson said that the US possessed “on-orbit space control weapons” that were designed to counter hostile actions against the country and its allies.
The acknowledgement came as the US said it was facing increasing competition in space from China and Russia. While China “develops and operates space and counterspace capabilities as part of a military modernisation strategy”, the US Space Force notes, Russia “views space as a warfighting domain and believes space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts”.
China was “rapidly” developing capabilities including space-based weapons to seek and destroy targets, US Space Force chief of operations General Chance Saltzman said in July, describing it as a “substantial” threat.
“Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist,” air force secretary Troy Meink said at the Air, Space, Cyber conference on Monday.
open image in galleryHe said that the US acknowledging its space-based weapons for the first time was intentional. “It is critically important that we maintain our dominance, not only in the air but in space,” Mr Meink said. “So, we’ve had to take steps to make sure that when we are threatened, we can take care of that. This is why the United States now has, in orbit, space-control weapons, capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversaries.”
The secretary specifically highlighted two weapons systems the US had put in space – the Space-Based Interceptor programme and the Space-Based Air-Moving Target Indication constellation. The former is a part of president Donald Trump‘s Golden Dome missile defence programme.
Mr Meink said it has moved from “initial contract to flight-ready hardware” but did not provide further details about the nature of the system.
open image in gallery“We’re not going to talk about the specifics of what we are doing, whether we’ve tested, not tested, or anything else. I would just say that the space environment is critical for military and economic security, and we need to make sure that the U.S. can operate freely there,” he said.
The Earth’s orbit is increasingly crowded with satellites and their debris and the weaponisation of space only complicates the problem.
SpaceX alone operates about 11,000 Starlink satellites and plans to make more launches in the coming years.