Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink revealed Monday that the U.S. military now has an “on-orbit” space weapon.
In the first public acknowledgement by a top Pentagon official that American forces have put weapons into orbit, Mr. Meink told a crowd at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber conference in National Harbor, Maryland, that the weapons are “capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”
The Air Force secretary did not elaborate on the nature of the weapon, and emphasized that his public remarks about it were “very well thought-out,” implying that he was going to lengths to avoid revealing classified information.
Speculation about the extent to which the U.S. Space Force has deployed weapons into orbit has been rampant in some national security communities for years, amid rising threats in space from China and Russia.
In 2024, Rep. Mike Turner, Ohio Republican, warned that Russia possessed a nuclear anti-satellite weapon. Mr. Turner, who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at the time, made global headlines with the warning.
Mr. Meink’s announcement Monday was likely crafted to send a message to Beijing and Moscow that the United States is now openly engaged at a potentially kinetic level in growing great power military competition in space.
“The United States now has on-orbit space-controlled weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action,” Mr. Meink said.
On a separate front, he also announced during his remarks to the conference on Monday morning that the U.S. military is making significant advances on next-generation intercontinental ballistic (ICBM) missile development capable of firing nuclear weapons around the world.
Specifically, Mr. Meink said that the Sentinel rocket — a modern replacement for the Minuteman (ICBM) — will have its first launchpad test in 2027.
Such a test would be a milestone for the land-based arm of the nuclear triad, as the now more than 50-year-old Minuteman system is taken out of service. The first launchpad test of Minuteman III was at Cape Kennedy, Florida, back in 1968.
Both of the announcements by the Air Force secretary are tethered to the U.S. military’s “long-range fires” approach of developing, maintaining and upgrading systems capable of hitting targets continents away.
Mr. Meink stressed that the U.S. needs to be “able to count on those space capabilities,” along with the more conventional, ground-based systems already in place.
<>The very intentional message to adversaries around the world surprised senior military and private defense industry leaders in the audience at the Air, Space & Cyber conference.
Murmurs spread through the crowd following Mr. Meink’s space-based weapons announcement.
Burt Field, the President and CEO of the Air Force Association, which is hosting this week’s conference, quipped that the Air Force secretary hadn’t shared “all the bombs he was going to drop in that opening salvo today.”
Mr. Field called the single line in Mr. Meink’s remarks about “in orbit” space weapons a “very subtle, ’oh, by the way’” type of remark.
During a question-and-answer session, Mr. Field asked Mr. Meink to expound.
“We’ve had to take steps to make sure that when we’re threatened, we can take care of that,” the Air Force secretary said.
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