In a first for the U.S. Space Force since its inception six years ago, the military branch has announced the deployment of weapons in space.
Speaking at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Monday, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink declared that the U.S. has placed offensive technology into orbit, though he did not disclose any details about the weapons.
“We are increasing readiness against existing threats, and the United States has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action,” he said.
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Although this is the first such acknowledgement from any global power, experts have long suspected space weapons are already a reality. In recent years, Russia has allegedly jammed communications satellites across Europe, and U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Russia of planning to put nuclear weapons in space. China, too, has demonstrated advanced capabilities for tracking and targeting satellites; these capabilities include a reusable space plane, similar to the U.S.’s X-37B, that could rendezvous with and capture adversarial spacecraft. Both Russia and China—as well as the U.S.—have a history of antisatellite missile tests and “cat and mouse” orbital encounters in which spacecraft maneuver to shadow or threaten others.
The U.S. deployment is a matter of necessity, Meink said in a press conference on Monday.
“Is there any question in the room, by anybody, about whether or not the Chinese or Russians have been developing these sorts of weapons?” he said. “For over a decade, we’ve been talking about the fact, and we have expressed concern, that the Chinese and Russians were developing weapons for space. We need to focus on making sure we can protect ourselves operating in that environment.”
According to Victoria Samson, chief director for space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation (SWF), the militarization is escalating rapidly in Earth orbit as more nations develop robust space programs. According to an SWF report co-authored by Samson from earlier this year, 13 countries have developed counterspace capabilities of some kind, including co-orbital satellites, which can disable or destroy other spacecraft, and space situational awareness satellites, which can track other objects in orbit.
“A lot of countries are saying, ‘We depend upon very heavily our space capabilities for national security reasons. They’re at risk; it’s a threatening environment. Therefore we need to build offensive capabilities that can threaten others,’” Samson told Scientific American before the Space Force announcement.
Despite their own well-documented military activity in space, both Russia and China responded to Monday’s announcement with statements warning against space militarization, with China opposing an “arms race” in the final frontier and Russia calling for the “complete demilitarization of space.” The current international framework for preventing space warfare is threadbare and filled with loopholes; signatories of the United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty of 1967 are merely obliged not to place weapons of mass destruction in orbit and to build no military bases and conduct no weapons testing on the moon or other planets.
Regardless of who is most culpable in the ongoing push for more and better offensive off-world capabilities, experts fear this announcement will further escalate the situation, raising the chances of space warfare that could prove ruinous for the entire world. John Barentine, an astronomer and formerly a policy expert at the International Dark-Sky Association (now DarkSky International), believes the militarization of space will ultimately prove “unwinnable” and will require a stabilizing doctrine similar to the Cold War’s nuclear threat of mutually assured destruction.
“I wonder if that’s not where we will end up with space militarization generally,” Barentine says, “where everybody rushes to acquire the technology, and we quickly realize that if war breaks out in space, it’s probably ‘game over’ for everybody.”
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