United States Space Command just held its first-ever “Apollo Maneuvers” exercise, which saw spacecraft maneuvering through simulated contested environments.
U.S. Space Command combines assets and personnel from each U.S. military branch (including the U.S. Space Force) to project American military power into and from orbit. It’s unclear which or how many satellites or spacecraft took place in Space Command’s recent Apollo Maneuvers 2026, but the exercise involved international partners, according to a command statement. What is known is that the exercise aimed to demonstrate “dynamic on-orbit operations, validate contested logistics and advance collective space maneuver doctrine.”
To put it in plain English, this means that Space Command practiced maneuvering satellites and other spacecraft in proximity to one another in a simulated conflict environment, in order to continue refining the “orbital dogfighting” that the U.S. military has been hinting at for some years.
In military terms, dogfighting refers to the close aerial combat that fighter jets engage in, pitting two or more pilots against one another in contests of flying ability and firepower.
In terms of space, this involves “objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity, and in control,” according to Space Force’s Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael A. Guetlein.
“That’s what we call dogfighting in space,” Guetlein told attendees at a conference in 2025, according to Air & Space Forces, while speaking about Chinese satellite operations observed in 2024.
From statements that U.S. Space Command leadership gave about its recent exercise, it sounds like Apollo Maneuvers practiced just that, but in space.
“We will take some of our existing satellites and work with partners to demonstrate what are some of the requirements and capabilities to be able to maneuver for advantage, not just maneuver when you have to change your orbital position,” Space Force Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, told reporters last month during a briefing at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, according to Air & Space Forces.
“The side that can maneuver persistently and at scale will set the operational rhythm in orbit.”
When it comes to space and what appears to be the inevitability of a conflict extending to Earth orbit, we’re still not quite sure what that will look like. But several nations have been developing capabilities and concepts for maneuvering satellites in close proximity to other satellites with the intent to destroy or disable them, or to deny or degrade their communications or intelligence-gathering capabilities.
The U.S. Space Force, in particular, has been developing an operations framework for fighting a war in space and has held multiple training exercises aimed at practicing “orbital warfare.”
But Space Force and U.S. Space Command still appear to lack many of the technologies they say they need to wage such warfare. Speaking at the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium in 2025, Whiting stated that that the United States needs “orbital interceptors” to fight in space.
“And what do we call these?” Whiting rhetorically asked attendees. “We call these weapons, and we need them to deter a space conflict and to be successful if we end up in such a fight.”
But U.S. Space Force has ordered and executed recent missions that have demonstrated capabilities and technologies along the lines of what Whiting described.
In June 2026, for example, a Rocket Lab Electron rocket sent one of the company’s Puma satellites to orbit, where it rendezvoused with a True Anomaly Jackal spacecraft that launched a month earlier. Once both spacecraft were in orbit, they maneuvered close to one another to simulate “dynamic engagements.”
The mission showed Space Force’s “readiness to lean on our commercial partners to deny, disrupt and counter any adversarial advantage — no matter where they try to operate in space,” according to a Space Force statement.
