NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The United States has “on-orbit space control weapons” that can defend American forces, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Monday, the first public acknowledgment by a Pentagon official that such systems are already in space.
Meink made the statement in a keynote at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference, according to a U.S. Air Force news release and reporting by The New York Times, Military Times and Breaking Defense. “This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action,” he said.
He did not say what the weapons are, how many are in orbit, or when they launched. After the speech he declined to say whether they are kinetic — meant to physically damage a target — or non-kinetic, such as electronic warfare, those outlets reported. He told reporters the wording was “well thought out.”
U.S. officials have for years described space as a potential battlefield and pointed to Chinese and Russian counterspace programs. Space Force fact sheets say Russia treats space as a warfighting domain and that both countries are fielding systems meant to disrupt U.S. satellites. Meink said the U.S. has known for more than a decade that adversaries were building ways to threaten American space systems.
The announcement is separate from President Trump’s proposed Golden Dome missile-defense network, which includes planned space-based interceptors. Meink said that interceptor program has moved from contract to flight-ready hardware in less than a year, according to the Air Force release. Weapons of mass destruction in orbit remain banned by the Outer Space Treaty.
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