VIENNA (AP) — Air Force Secretary Troy Meink made headlines recently by confirming the United States has deployed weapons in space. He did not, however, detail what the weapons were, how they work or if they were targeting other objects in space.
It’s not just U.S. efforts regarding space weapons that remain shrouded in mystery.
Here's a look at issues that concern experts:
Meink, speaking at a defense conference, said the U.S. has fielded “on-orbit
space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action,” referring to U.S. forces. It remains unclear which type of weapon Meink was referencing.
Such resources as the 2026 Global Counterspace Capabilities Report, published by the nonprofit Secure World Foundation and based on publicly available information, help provide an overview of potential space weapons.
The report lists five categories of counterspace capabilities. It examines systems being developed by 13 countries, among them the U.S., Russia, China, India, Australia, France, Iran, and Israel.
These include satellites designed to maneuver near, inspect, disable, or destroy spacecraft. The report also examines ground, air, or sea-launched missile interceptors designed to destroy satellites kinetically.
Furthermore, the report highlights electronic warfare, such as jamming, in addition to lasers or high-power microwaves meant to blind or damage satellite sensors. The report also lists cyber operations targeting space networks.
Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the foundation, which advocates for the peaceful use of space, said the existence of various satellites and their physical location in orbit is fairly transparent but their capabilities and intended uses are harder to understand.
For example, the Vienna-based U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs supports transparency in space by maintaining a register which links each object to its responsible country. States who signed on to a 1976 agreement are required to provide information on launches by governments and private companies as well as the general function of the space object, but are not required to provide details on their purpose.
As an example of something that could be used for both military and non-military purposes, it became known in 2021 that China had tested a satellite with a robotic arm that can maneuver to a system, grab it, and move it out of orbit. In 2022, China used such a system for the first time to tow one of its dead satellites out of orbit.
Furthermore, the U.S. warned two years ago that Russia was developing a new space-based, anti-satellite weapon, though the White House said the danger wasn’t imminent at the time.
Then-White House national security spokesman John Kirby declined to comment on whether the weapon was nuclear capable, but did say it would violate the Outer Space Treaty.
Russia denied developing such a new capability.
The Outer Space Treaty is the main international agreement that establishes the rules and norms for how countries explore and use space. In addition to Russia, the U.S., China and all other nuclear-armed nations are party to the treaty.
Article IV states that parties “undertake not to place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.”
The treaty also declares that space is a global commons that can be used for only peaceful purposes.
The treaty was concluded in 1967 during the Cold War when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were both racing to explore space, and conducted a series of nuclear tests in orbit.
At the time, space looked radically different.
Jonathan McDowell, a retired astronomer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has been tracking satellite launches for more than four decades.
By the end of 1967, 128 satellites were in orbit and communicating with Earth, according to McDowell. At the time, all satellites were the product of state-backed, public projects. This is compared to what McDowell says are approximately 16,810 functioning satellites today — many of which are from companies such as SpaceX’s Starlink network.
In 1962, the U.S. exploded a series of atomic bombs in space as part of Operation Fishbowl. The first one, the Starfish Prime test, was launched from an atoll southwest of Hawaii. The explosion caused an artificial radiation belt that destroyed several satellites and partially knocked out street lights and phone lines in Hawaii.
Likewise, the Soviet Union conducted nuclear tests in space as part of Project K between 1961 and 1962. The tests caused electrical grid failures, disabled phone lines and triggered a fire that destroyed an entire power plant in Kazakhstan.
The trials demonstrated the immense risk that atomic explosions in space pose to civilian infrastructure and communication on Earth, prompting the superpowers to seek an agreement that would ban nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in space.
Analysts argue the treaty fails to address some of the challenges of modern times.
Jessica West, a senior researcher at Project Ploughshares, a Canadian peace and security research institute, said the legal framework governing space needed to be “fundamentally changed.”
She said that while the Outer Space Treaty acts like a “constitutional foundation” that remains relevant and applicable, the international community has not done the “hard work” to build a legal structure around the treaty, especially when it comes to improving verification mechanisms for space activities and expanding principles to banning conventional weapons in space.
Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, agreed, saying there is a “gap” in the treaty when it comes to barring conventional weapons.
International efforts to negotiate a new framework banning all weapons in space have stalled because there is no agreement on what counts as a space weapon, among other things, according to Samson.
A lot of the capabilities are “dual use,” meaning they can be used for civilian and military purposes, which makes it difficult to define what constitutes a weapon, she said.
“You can get up close to a satellite to refuel it, but you can also get up close to a satellite to release objects at it, shine a laser at it, or try to jam it,” Samson said.
The discussions on banning weapons come at a time when the U.S. under President Donald Trump has placed a growing emphasis on space.
In 2019, during his first term, Trump created the Space Force as a separate military branch. In his second term, he has announced the “Golden Dome” missile defense system, which includes plans to put weapons in space.
Attempts by Russia and China to introduce a new treaty to prevent the placement of all weapons in space have hit a wall, in part due to the lack of a definition. Additionally, Washington says it ignores ground-based anti-satellite missiles that when used create massive amounts of dangerous space debris.
In November 2021 Russia launched such a missile to destroy a defunct Soviet-era satellite, creating more than 1,500 pieces of debris that increased risk to U.S. and Russian astronauts aboard the International Space Station and China’s Tiangong space station.
With progress on the full treaty apparently stalled, international negotiations have shifted their focus to discussing responsible behavior in space, such as avoiding the accumulation of space debris.
Samson said the U.S. has had a policy of avoiding the accumulation of space debris for many years because the debris can interfere with space flight safety and harm the U.S. self interest.
She also said that for the same reason there is a possibility that the space weapons Meink referenced could be non-kinetic weapons such as jammers.
Space debris is generated not only by kinetic space weapons but also when satellites collide and get smashed into countless fragments and smaller particles that travel at high velocity and are capable of destroying or damaging more spacecraft.
“If you start having collisions causing more debris, and more debris causing more collisions, you run the risk .. of this irreversible cascading effect,” said Steven Freeland, who is emeritus professor of international law at Western Sydney University as well as professorial fellow at Bond University.
According to the European Space Agency, there are about 46,950 pieces of debris that are regularly tracked by space surveillance networks in Earth’s orbit.
Based on statistical models, the agency estimates there are millions more smaller pieces of space junk circling Earth’s orbit.
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Manzuk reported from New York.
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