US confirms deploying weapons in space

China warns against turning space into a battlefield

WASHINGTON:

The US has deployed weapons in space, the US military has confirmed, in an extraordinary public announcement that analysts warn will accelerate a high-risk arms race with Russia and China in Earth's orbit.

The US secretary of the air force, Troy Meink, said Washington had active "on-orbit" weapons, meaning they had been deployed and were circling the globe.

"Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist," Meink said on Monday at the annual Air, Space, Cyber conference. "This is why the United States now has, on-orbit, space-control weapons."

Meink said he would not go into the "specifics" of the weapons. However, a US Space Force spokesperson said space control could refer to "employing kinetic [combat] and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities".

The statement added that "these capabilities can be employed for offensive and defensive purposes".

Responding to the US announcement, China's foreign ministry said Washington was "preparing for war in outer space", and warned against turning space "into a battlefield, as well as an arms race there". In Moscow, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that Russia believed "that space must be free of any weapon" and called for "the complete demilitarisation of space".

It has been an open secret that the US, Russia and China are working on space weapons, which could include signal jammers to disable other satellites or more "kinetic" options including those that fire projectiles.

Still, space experts warn a public confirmation of such capabilities in orbit for the first time could accelerate a risky arms race.

The US 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 US official said.

US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said at a conference near Washington, D.C. on Monday that 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 of 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 the Capability and Resource Integration Directorate at U.S. 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."