US acknowledges deploying space weapons in orbit

The United States has acknowledged placing weapons in Earth’s orbit, a rare disclosure that raises new questions about how far military competition in space has advanced and what kind of systems are now circling the planet.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Monday that the United States has “on-orbit space control weapons” capable of defending American forces against hostile action. Speaking at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference, he gave no details about when the weapons were deployed, how many there are, where they are positioned or what they are designed to do.

“Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist,” Meink said. “This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action.”

The announcement was framed as a message to China and Russia, both of which the U.S. Space Force says are developing systems to challenge U.S. space-enabled military capabilities. It also marks what one expert described as a notable shift in official language.

“That’s the first time any official has acknowledged an actually designed weapon has been placed in space,” Victoria Samson, chief director of Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, told Al Jazeera. “It’s always been ‘systems with capabilities’ prior.”

Experts said the U.S. systems are more likely to be non-destructive weapons such as electronic warfare or radio-jamming platforms than weapons designed to physically destroy satellites. Satellites are central to modern military operations, providing secure communications, reconnaissance, targeting information, location data and missile-launch detection.

“We don’t know exactly what the mechanism of the weapon is,” Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor in astropolitics at Durham University, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “I would expect there to be some kind of electronic warfare or radio-jamming platform. This would be a non-destructive kind of anti-satellite weapon.”

Such systems can disrupt the radio links that make satellites useful. “If you take out the radio links then your satellite is very useless,” Bowen said.

He said more destructive possibilities are less likely but cannot be ruled out. “Less likely would be a kinetic kill vehicle of some sort, so a vehicle that would release a projectile of some sort that could ram into a satellite and destroy it,” he said. A close-inspection or grappling satellite could also be possible, he added.

Kinetic attacks can create dangerous debris, a major concern in orbit. Other countries have also demonstrated or developed ways to interfere with space systems. Bowen said Russia and China have conducted more rendezvous and proximity operations over the past decade, flying close to Western satellites to inspect or photograph them. China has also demonstrated a “space tug” capability by moving one of its own old satellites into a different orbit, he said.

Rod Thornton, a reader in Russian Defence and Security Studies at King’s College London, told the BBC that such satellites could theoretically become “hunter-killer satellites” by colliding with other spacecraft or nudging them out of orbit. He said Russia also has ground-based missiles that can strike satellites in low Earth orbit and anti-satellite missiles that can be launched from aircraft.

China and Russia criticized the U.S. announcement. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun warned against the “weaponisation of outer space, turning it into a battlefield, as well as an arms race there” and urged Washington to stop “preparing for war in outer space.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia wanted space kept “free of any weapons” and called for work toward “the complete demilitarisation of space.”

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bars nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction from orbit and bans military bases and weapons testing on the moon and other celestial bodies. It does not expressly ban conventional weapons in Earth’s orbit, leaving electronic warfare systems, conventional anti-satellite weapons and other counterspace capabilities outside a blanket prohibition.