Pentagon Acknowledges Space Weapons

October 2026
By Xiaodon Liang

For the first time, the United States acknowledged the deployment of weapons in space, marking a decisive departure from a long-standing practice of maintaining ambiguity regarding U.S. offensive space capabilities.

U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink made the announcement Sept. 14 at an event near Washington organized by the Air & Space Forces Association. Providing no additional detail, Meink said the United States “has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

According to U.S. Space Force doctrine, space control “comprises the activities required to contest and control the space domain,” and does not include support from space-based assets to other military operations.

Meink did not specify whether the weapons were kinetic. In addition to kinetic anti-satellite options, U.S. counterspace capabilities include electromagnetic and cyber warfare.

Speaking a day later at the same conference, the chief of space operations, Gen. Douglas Schiess, said the U.S. Space Force now operates “on-orbit weapons that can defend the joint force against space-enabled attacks.” Schiess’s remark suggests the Pentagon might use its now-declared weapons not only to defend U.S. satellites, but also to disable other countries’ satellites when they support military operations.

CNN, citing US officials and international intelligence sources, reported Sept. 16 that Russia provided satellite-enabled intelligence to Iran ahead of a March 27 missile attack on a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia. The attack, which wounded 12 U.S. service members and destroyed an Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft, was an early Iranian success in the seven-month-long war that the United States and Israel initiated in February.

The Space Force intends to continue improving its ability to target enemy assets in space, but “still has a long way to go,” Gen. Stephen Whiting, the commander of U.S. Space Command, said Sept. 16 at a conference in Maui, Hawaii.

In the first week of September, Whiting’s command conducted its “inaugural live-fly exercise designed to demonstrate dynamic on-orbit operations, validate contested logistics, and advance collective space maneuver doctrine,” Space Command announced Sept. 8. The exercise, Apollo Maneuvers 2026, involved “coordinated maneuvers” in low-earth, medium-earth, and geosynchronous orbits. Representatives from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom participated in a parallel exercise with the United States.

The shift in U.S. declaratory approach to offensive space capabilities comes more than two and a half years after U.S. officials accused Russia of developing a space-based nuclear weapon. (See ACT, March 2024.)

The deployment of nuclear weapons in outer space is categorically banned by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, but the deployment of other weapons is not. The preamble to the treaty, however, emphasizes that space is to be used for peaceful purposes.

Following the U.S. allegation, Russia vetoed an April 2024 UN Security Council resolution reaffirming the Outer Space Treaty. China abstained on the resolution, which was proposed by Japan and the United States. (See ACT, May 2024.)

China, Russia, and the United States have each demonstrated the capability to conduct direct-ascent, kinetic anti-satellite operations and likely also field spacecraft capable of so-called rendezvous and proximity operations (RPOs), permitting direct physical interaction or close-range interference with satellites.

The United States pledged not to conduct any further direct-ascent, kinetic anti-satellite tests in April 2022. (See ACT, May 2022.)

China and Russia voted against a December 2022 UN General Assembly resolution calling on all states not to conduct such tests.

U.S. Space Force officials noted in March 2025 that China has stepped-up RPO exercises in low-earth orbit, “practicing dogfighting” in space, in the words of Gen. Michael Guetlein, who was then the vice chief of space operations and now leads the Golden Dome program office.

Seven other countries have more limited counterspace capabilities, according to the latest edition of the Secure World Foundation’s annual assessment of global counterspace capabilities.