US Acknowledges Deployment of Orbiting Space Control Weapons Amid Growing Rivalries

The United States has acknowledged deploying space weapons in orbit of the Earth. US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink confirmed on Monday that the so-called “space control weapons” would be used to defend US forces on the planet, marking a significant new chapter in the militarisation of space – or at least the transparency of it. The announcement, which Meink framed as a message to US rivals China and Russia, could turn Earth’s orbit into an increasingly contested military domain, experts warn. Warfare could include countries targeting each other’s satellites, which provide critical services such as GPS, communications and intelligence to military forces on the ground, as well as civilian infrastructure.

“Space Force doctrine describes ‘space control’ as having the outcome of space superiority, which they define as the ability to operate at the time and place of their choosing, while denying the same to an adversary,” Victoria Samson, chief director of Space Security and Stability for Secure World Foundation, a private non-profit focused on military space and security issues, told Al Jazeera.

Air Force Secretary Meink said the US has stationed “weapons” in Earth’s orbit, but did not specify when they were placed there, how many there are, 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 at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference. “This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action.”

Samson said the keyword from Meink’s announcement is “weapons” in the context of “space control”. “Space control encapsulates the mission areas required to contest and control the space domain – employing kinetic and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities,” Meink said, adding that “these capabilities can be employed for offensive and defensive purposes”. “That’s the first time any official has acknowledged an actually designed weapon has been placed in space,” Samson told Al Jazeera. “It’s always been ‘systems with capabilities’ prior.”

Experts say these weapons are likely to be space-based communications jammers rather than kinetic ones that launch strikes. Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor in astropolitics at Durham University in the United Kingdom, told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme: “We don’t know exactly what the mechanism of the weapon is. 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, and these variants already exist on Earth.”

The US Space Force is the newest branch of the US military, created in December 2019 under President Donald Trump’s first term, responsible for organising and conducting US military operations in and through space. Unlike NASA, which focuses on civilian space exploration, Space Force is part of the US Air Force and comes under US Space Command, which is headquartered at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

While treaties such as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibit nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in orbit, they do not have a blanket ban on conventional weapons, leaving room for interpretation. China’s Foreign Ministry opposed the move, warning against the weaponisation of outer space, while Russia called for space to be kept free of any weapons. Independent reports from groups like the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) note that China and Russia are also developing a broad range of counterspace capabilities, including direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons, jamming, spoofing, and cyber operations.