The US military said it has deployed weapons in space. Here’s what that could mean

By Hanna Park, Jackie Wattles, CNN

(CNN) — The United States has deployed weapons in space and will use them to defend American forces, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Monday. It’s the first public acknowledgment that the nation has such capabilities in orbit and a potential signal to those that could pose threats in the domain.

“Today we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist,” Meink told attendees of 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.

If the disclosure is meant to serve as a deterrent — aiming to warn adversaries that the US is capable of forcefully responding to threats in space — the vagueness of Meink’s remarks may limit their effectiveness, said Clayton Swope, the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the bipartisan nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies, who previously served for more than a decade in the CIA.

“The disclosure is still significant because it’s not something that we have talked about in this way,” Swope said. But “you really have to think out this chain of logic beyond just this disclosure.”

For such a disclosure to be an effective deterrent, Swope said, US adversaries have to understand “what exactly is the destructive potential of this weapon, and then what exactly don’t we want them to do — so that by knowing that they don’t do it.”

Militarizing space

President Donald Trump has touted the US Space Force, which he created in 2019 under the Department of the Air Force, as a historic step toward bolstering the nation’s defense capabilities amid an advancing arms race in which China and Russia have challenged America’s dominance in space.

“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.

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.

It’s not clear what type of weapon the US may have deployed. There are a broad range of possibilities — including satellites capable of jamming enemy communications and weapons that could leave orbit, target and destroy ground-based equipment, Swope said.

It’s even possible Meink could have been referring to an anti-satellite weapon, or ASAT, which can be used to seek out and physically destroy an enemy satellite in orbit.

Such technology has been previously tested by the US, China and Russia. But it’s widely considered among the most risky and broadly detrimental types of space weapons because debris from exploded satellites can linger in orbit for years — risking setting off an indiscriminate string of collisions with any nearby satellites.

CNN has reached out to the Space Force for comment.

China called on the US on Tuesday “to stop expanding military build-up in outer space, and uphold global strategic stability with concrete actions.”

“China stands for peaceful use of outer space and keeping it safe, and opposes any arms race in outer space or any attempt to weaponize it and turn it into a warzone,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at a regular briefing on Tuesday.

The US committed in 2022 to never again test “direct-ascent” ASAT weaponry, Swope noted, referring to types of ASAT weapons that are launched from the ground to target a satellite.

But the precise language of the commitment does not rule out testing or deploying another type of ASAT weapon, such as a “co-orbital” ASAT weapon, Swope said. That type of tool could involve using a spacecraft to directly approach an enemy satellite in orbit.

“Dating back to the Soviet Union and the Cold War, the Russians have been interested in developing what I would call ‘co-orbital, anti-satellite’ weapons,” Swope added. “These are satellites that would launch some type of projectile or other munition at the target satellite to disable it.”

‘Maintain our dominance’

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, such as upending satellites the world relies on to predict the weather and respond to disasters, or even potentially affecting global navigation systems used for a wide variety of purposes, including banking, cargo shipping, ambulance dispatch and even hailing a ride share.

“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.

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.”

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 will be completed by 2028. As CNN previously reported, the Pentagon has scheduled the shield’s first major test for just before the 2028 election, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Among other elements, the Golden Dome proposal includes deploying interceptors that could remain in Earth orbit until they’re used to destroy enemy missiles mid-flight.

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.

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CNN’s Rashard Rose, Simone McCarthy, Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.