The United States has formally confirmed for the first time that it has deployed active military weapons in Earth’s orbit, raising immediate concerns over a potentially dangerous acceleration of an orbital arms race. Speaking at the Air, Space, Cyber conference, US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink announced that Washington now maintains operational "on-orbit" space-control capabilities. While Meink declined to elaborate on specific technologies, a US Space Force spokesperson clarified that space control encompasses both kinetic combat options and non-kinetic measures, such as signal jammers, designed for defensive and offensive operations.
The admission drew sharp, swift criticism from global rivals. China’s foreign ministry accused the US of "preparing for war in outer space" and warned against transforming orbit into an active battlefield. In Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reiterated Russia's position that space must remain completely demilitarised and entirely free of weaponry. Though the 1967 Outer Space Treaty explicitly prohibits placing weapons of mass destruction in orbit, it left open a legal loophole by failing to ban conventional orbital weapons.
Space security analysts caution that publicising these capabilities fundamentally shifts international norms surrounding military activity above Earth. Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and space tracking expert formerly with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, noted that while covert space assets were long an open secret, official confirmation almost guarantees that China and Russia will deploy comparable systems in response. Experts further warn that operational escalation—or potential kinetic combat in orbit—could generate vast fields of high-speed space debris, endangering civilian satellites and long-term space infrastructure.