US military has deployed ‘space control weapons’, Air Force Secretary says in first public acknowledgement of American weapons in orbit
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The US has revealed that it has deployed space weapons in Earth’s orbit, marking the first time the nation has acknowledged its use of such weapons.
‘Today we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist,’ said US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink. ‘This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.’
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According to the US Space Force, several countries pose threats to the US in space. China ‘develops and operates space and counterspace capabilities as part of a military modernisation strategy’ and Russia ‘views space as a warfighting domain and believes space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts,’ it said.
A 1967 treaty banned weapons of mass destruction in orbit, but this hasn’t stopped major players such as the US, Russia and China from exploring other options outside the treaty. This includes targeting rivals’ satellites and key equipment used for surveillance, communications, and navigation.
Meink did not say when the weapon was put into orbit, or share any further details about its capabilities and how it operates.
‘We’re not going to talk about the specifics of what we are doing, whether we’ve tested, not tested, or anything else. I would just say that the space environment is critical for military and economic security, and we need to make sure that the U.S. can operate freely there,’ Meink added.
‘It is critically important that we maintain our dominance not only in the air but in space, and so we’ve had to take steps to make sure that when we’re threatened, we can take care of that.’
Some experts have begun to speculate on what exactly the new weapon is. Secure World Foundation’s chief director of space security and stability Victoria Samson said: ‘I’m going to guess what [Meink] is talking about is not a kinetic space-control weapon due to multiple comments government officials have said about avoiding debris causing counter space. So I’m going to go with my first guess: space-based jammers, electronic warfare.’
Jammers are electronic warfare weapons that send huge surges of radio frequency energy, or ‘noise’ to block and disrupt radio signals between satellites and receivers on Earth
