US Orbital weapons acknowledgement hailed as 'landmark'

The U.S. Air Force chief's acknowledgment this week that the Pentagon has weapons in orbit is a "landmark" moment in the rising militarization of space aimed at deterring aggression against Washington's allies and economic interests, ​a U.S. official said.

U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink at a conference in Washington on Monday ‌said Washington "has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action," the strongest admission yet by a Pentagon official on U.S. weapons in space amid rising space tensions with Russia and China.

"The acknowledgment of these space-control capabilities is fundamental to ​ensuring that we prevent deterrence from failing, and that we are postured and ready should deterrence fail ​to employ them effectively," Richard Palmer, the director of Capability and Resource Integration Directorate at US ⁠Space Command, said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a space-defence conference hosted by consulting-firm Novaspace in Paris, Palmer added that ​there are “some actors across the globe who are very much interested in undermining the collective interests of the countries and ​allies gathered here in this audience and across Europe and the rest of the world.” 

He declined to discuss the nature or capability of those weapons.

"The bottom line is that our joint force and our allied forces require space. Our economies require space,” added Palmer. “We are ​ready in the U.S. to preserve that."

It underscores how the world’s major space powers are preparing for the prospect of ​conflict extending into space. 

Satellites have become indispensable to modern warfare, as conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have demonstrated.

Some other countries ​are also looking ⁠to develop orbital weapons. That includes Germany, which has a 35-billion euro military space spending plan aimed at countering growing threats from adversaries.