US Confirms for the First Time It Has Deployed a Space Weapon in Earth's Orbit

It sounds like something ripped straight out of a science fiction war movie, but it is now a reality: the U.S. has, for the first time, confirmed it has deployed a space weapon in Earth’s orbit.

Confirmation comes from Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink, who was speaking at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference on Monday. He insisted the space weapon was about protecting U.S. forces.

As reported by CNN, Meink said:

“Today we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist. This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

“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 continued.

Meink refused to explain what the weapon was capable of doing, or when it was put in orbit. Nor do we know if the weapon has already been used.

U.S. officials have hinted at having offensive and defensive space capabilities for some time now, but this is the first time someone has gone on the record to confirm it. There’s a great deal of speculation about what the weapon may be. Some think it could be a kinetic weapon that could actually crash into something, perhaps a satellite, and blow it up. Others think it’s more likely a jammer or a directed energy weapon, one that wouldn’t cause damaging space debris.

The Trump administration has in the past talked about space weapons forming part of the U.S.’s anti-air ‘Golden dome’ defence system, having set up the Space Force in 2019 to work on space capabilities. A spokesperson for the U.S. Space Force told the BBC: “Space control encapsulates the mission areas required to contest and control the space domain — employing kinetic and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities through disruption, degradation and even destruction, if necessary. These capabilities can be employed for offensive and defensive purposes at the direction of combatant commands.”

There are some who believe the next war could start in space, with an adversary perhaps taking out a satellite in an action that would disable communications on earth. This could in turn have a significant impact on a country’s military operations. Space weapons could also theoretically be used to knock long-range missiles that enter orbit out of their trajectory.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans weapons of mass destruction in orbit, but it does not prohibit the use of conventional weapons in space or the use of ground-based weapons against assets in space.

Last year, Donald Trump signed an executive order calling U.S superiority in space “a measure of national vision and willpower.” Speaking at the conference, Meink said a U.S. space-based interceptor program had moved “from initial contract to flight-ready hardware in less than one year.”