The United States has stationed weapons in Earth’s orbit, the US Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink has said in the first public acknowledgement of such a deployment by a Pentagon official.
Mr Meink said the systems were capable of protecting US military forces from hostile action by adversaries. He made the remarks during a keynote speech at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
“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.
The secretary did not identify the weapons involved or say when they had been deployed. The US Space Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Washington has spent years preparing for potential advances by Russia and China in military space operations, amid concerns that American satellites and forces on the ground could be targeted.
The United States, Russia and China began testing weapons capable of destroying satellites decades ago. Washington later rejected such systems because they can create fields of destructive debris in orbit.
In recent years, the Air Force has instead developed what former secretary Frank Kendall described as “low-debris-causing weapons” designed to disrupt or disable enemy satellites.
Former Space Force chief General Chance Saltzman told a Senate committee in 2023 that new space weapons systems would be fully operational by 2026. Former Pentagon officials have suggested that they could involve lasers, high-powered microwave systems or American satellites able to seize or move hostile spacecraft.
The announcement comes as the Trump administration pursues the Golden Dome project, which includes the development and deployment of “space-based interceptors” as part of an expanded US air defence system. President Trump said in May that General Michael Guetlein, the Space Force’s vice chief of space operations, would oversee the project.
Mr Kendall said in 2024 that space “is a place that can be used for military advantage”. He added: “The threat is there. It’s a domain we have to be competitive in.”
