The United States has acknowledged for the first time that it has deployed space weapons in Earth's orbit, extending the arms race between Washington and Beijing beyond the atmosphere as the two powers compete for global influence.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said at an event in Maryland on the 14th that the United States has placed weapons in orbit to protect ground forces and American satellites, the Washington Post reported.
Meink did not specify what the weapons are designed to do or how many have been deployed. Citing an unnamed U.S. official, the Post said the capability includes the ability of the U.S. military to directly destroy or disable enemy satellites used to target American forces or satellites. The newspaper described the disclosure as a blunt warning aimed at China and Russia, noting that Washington has warned that the two countries are threatening U.S. satellites through aggressive orbital maneuvers, including the use of lasers and interference with satellite communications.
Kari Bingen, who researches aerospace security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a defense and foreign policy think tank, said that given how actively China and Russia are developing space weapons, "it makes sense for the United States to have space weapons in orbit to protect its space assets."
China Pushed a Satellite Out of Orbit With a Robotic Arm as Space Arms Race Accelerates
Anti-satellite weapons, or ASATs, aimed at adversaries' space assets have traditionally involved firing missiles from the ground or from fighter jets to strike satellites. That approach is shifting toward systems that orbit the Earth and strike target satellites from there. Leading methods include non-physical attacks, or soft kills, in which a weapon approaches a target satellite and fires a laser or uses high-powered electromagnetic waves to disable communications; the use of robotic arms or thrusters to knock a satellite out of orbit or damage it through collision; and hard kills, in which metal submunitions are released to destroy an enemy satellite.
In 2022, China's SJ-21 satellite approached a defunct Chinese satellite in geostationary orbit, grabbed it with a robotic arm and successfully moved it out of orbit. Beijing says the technology is intended to repair or dispose of its own satellites, but it could also be used to remove another country's military or reconnaissance satellites. China is also believed to have conducted large-scale, high-speed rendezvous maneuvers using test satellites and to have completed trials in which an unmanned spacecraft released small submunitions or auxiliary objects for reconnaissance. Russia has for several years launched orbital test satellites that have carried out close-trailing maneuvers in the same orbits as U.S. reconnaissance satellites.
China objected immediately, saying the move could fuel the weaponization of space and an arms race. Asked about the issue at a regular briefing on the 15th, Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said China "has consistently upheld the peaceful use of outer space and opposes the weaponization of space, turning space into a battlefield, and an arms race." He added that Beijing "urges the United States to halt its military buildup and war preparations in space and to safeguard global strategic stability through concrete action."
Concerns have also been raised in the United States that formally acknowledging American space weapons could provoke China and Russia. Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit organization, said the disclosure could escalate tensions if China and Russia take similar steps. "There is also concern that the U.S. announcement could serve to legitimize the act of placing weapons in space itself," she said.
