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The United States has deployed weapons in space and will use them to defend American forces, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Monday – the first public acknowledgment of such capabilities in orbit and a deliberate signal to those that pose potential threats in the domain.
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“Today we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist,” Meink told the Air, Space and Cyber Conference, an annual gathering hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association in National Harbor, Maryland. “This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”
Meink did not provide specifics on the weapons and, when asked to expand, refused to provide additional details. It’s unknown when the weapons were put into orbit.
President Donald Trump has touted the US Space Force, which he created in 2019 as part of the Air Force, as a historic step toward bolstering US defense capabilities amid an advancing arms race in which China and Russia have challenged America’s space dominance.
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“China develops and operates space and counterspace capabilities as part of a military modernization strategy,” the US Space Force says on its website, while “Russia views space as a warfighting domain and believes space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts.”
US military officials have repeatedly warned the two countries are testing new offensive space capabilities, citing examples such as Russian satellite constellation training missions that Washington says could demonstrate “attack and defend tactics” for future combat and China’s development of a nuclear capable partial-orbit hypersonic missile.
As CNN reported in 2024, US intelligence suggests Russia has also made efforts to develop a space-based nuclear weapon that would use a massive energy wave, known as an electromagnetic pulse, to potentially knock out a large swath of commercial and government satellites – a claim Moscow has denied.
Such a weapon could have broad, devastating impacts – for example, upending satellites the world relies on to predict the weather and respond to disasters, or even potentially affecting global navigation systems used for everything from banking and cargo shipping to hailing a ride share and ambulance dispatch.
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“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,” Meink said Monday.
CNN has reached out to the Space Force for comment.
While the 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in orbit, it does not prohibit the use of conventional weapons in space or the use of ground-based weapons against assets in space – leaving room for interpretation.
Last December, Trump signed an executive order calling US superiority in space “a measure of national vision and willpower,” with an emphasis on developing next-generation missile defense technologies and ensuring its abilities to counter threats, including “any placement of nuclear weapons in space.”
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The executive order was a step toward Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system, an ambitious multibillion-dollar plan inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome that officials say would allow the US to intercept missiles from anywhere in the world.
The US has remained vague on its plans for developing the missile shield, which Trump said he hopes to be completed by 2028. As CNN earlier reported, the Pentagon has scheduled its first major test for just before the 2028 election, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Speaking Monday, Meink also said a US space-based interceptor program had moved “from initial contract to flight-ready hardware in less than one year,” without revealing further details.
CNN’s Rashard Rose, Simone McCarthy, Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.
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