US Space Weapon: What Could Its Capabilities Be? - Newsweek

The U.S. has deployed a weapon in Earth’s orbit in a move that has raised the prospect of an accelerating space arms race with Russia and China.

Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink on Monday told the Air, Space and Cyber Conference that the "on-orbit" weapon was needed to protect U.S. forces against hostile enemy action.

“We continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist,” Meink said, prompting China's Foreign Ministry to respond and “urge the U.S. to stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space.”

A 1967 treaty bans weapons of mass destruction in orbit. The U.S, Russia, and China, however, have explored other means of weaponry outside of the treaty, such as targeting the satellites of adversaries to hurt their military communications, surveillance and navigation capabilities.

U.S. officials have thus far been tight-lipped about U.S. space weapons, so Meink’s statement marks a significant shift in rhetoric from Washington.

“It's notable this is the first time that the United States has said it has weapons in space,” Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Newsweek.

“The disclosure is like saying, ‘we've got weapons out in the ocean,’ ” he added.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in December 2025 that emphasized the U.S. Space Force's role in both defending assets and serving as an attacking force.

The Trump administration has also said space-based capabilities and interceptor missiles were key to its planned "Golden Dome" defense system to protect the U.S. from airborne threats.

However, Meink did not offer any details about the weapon's capabilities or when it was launched into orbit. This lack of additional details means that "anything is on the table,” Swope said.

“It could be an on-orbit weapon that's meant to blow up another satellite or latch on to another satellite and move it to an orbit it's not supposed to be in,” he said.

“It could be an energy weapon that is designed to cause permanent damage to a satellite," he added, or "it could be an energy weapon like a signal jammer or a laser dazzler meant to disrupt a satellite just taking pictures of the Earth."

A U.S. Space Force spokesperson said in a statement on Monday that space control “encapsulates the mission areas required to contest and control the space domain.”

The statement also referred to “kinetic and nonkinetic means to affect adversary capabilities through disruption, degradation and even destruction, if necessary.”

However, Swope said since it is not known what the weapon is, its destructive potential is unknown either which adds to the mystery of its value as a deterrence. “We don't really know what red line that anyone would have to cross for the U.S. to use this weapon.”

Bleddyn Bowen, co-director at the Space Research Centre (SPARC) at Durham University, England, told Newsweek, "without knowing the details, it's difficult to know what, if anything, this sort of space-based option would give the Americans that they don't already have from terrestrial based systems.”

The U.S. Space Force issued a space threat fact sheet in 2024, which, by its latest update in July 2026, describes how China and Russia are testing and fielding sophisticated counterspace capabilities with the aim of disrupting and degrading U.S. space-enabled capabilities.

The fact sheet says China is developing space and counterspace capabilities in a military modernization strategy to achieve “strategic decisive victory, strategic counterbalance, and strategic deterrence and control over the U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific region.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sees space as playing a key role in future conflicts by enabling long-range precision strikes and denying other militaries the use of space-based information, it added.

“China has a very well-developed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance set of satellites,” said Swope.

China completed 37 orbital launches through June, boosting its total on-orbit payloads to 1,506, and is targeting 140 launches in 2026—which would be a 52 percent year-over-year increase.

The PLA has 510+ ISR-capable (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) satellites with optical, multispectral, radar, and radiofrequency sensors that can detect U.S. aircraft carriers, expeditionary forces, and air wings, according to the U.S. Space Force.

As of June 1, China had launched 200 G60 and 168 SatNet communications satellites in low Earth orbit which were part of two planned mega constellations to compete with Western variants.

“They are working on a number of constellations that look like Starlink to provide connectivity, which will undoubtedly be used for military purposes in addition to civilian ones,” said Swope.

China is also working to master reusable space launch, he said. “China is essentially putting together the building blocks for space power that rivals the United States, and that space power from a military standpoint is oriented around supporting operations on Earth.”

The space threat fact sheet also described how Russia views space as a war-fighting domain and as decisive for future conflicts, but its technology has declined amid funding shortfalls and international isolation.

Russia conducted only 17 launches in 2025—short of the 26 or more annual launches it averaged from 1995 to 2015—and remained absent from the international market, launching roughly 10 foreign payloads, according to the U.S.

In May 2024, the U.S. said Russia had launched a satellite as a counterspace weapon placed in nearly the same orbit as an American reconnaissance satellite.

In February 2026, it was reported that two Russian satellites had likely intercepted the communications of at least a dozen European ones since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

While it has expertise in rocket engines and space launch, Russia’s launch activity is behind the U.S. and China, according to the U.S. document.

"Russian space power looks very different to that of China and U.S." said Swope, who referred to failures of its equivalent to Starlink, called "Rassvet" to replace connectivity over Ukraine after Russia lost access to the SpaceX-owned communications network

“From an intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance standpoint, Russia has tried to emulate the United States and China and develop more reconnaissance satellites but is well behind both China and the United States.”

Russia is known for developing satellites that stalk and shadow other satellites which it has done in low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit. “Russia essentially wants to make sure that none of its potential adversaries could use space in a conflict,” said Swope.

“It is less able to use space itself for joint operations—that is the difference between how Russia is approaching its military space power and China.”

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Tobias Meyjes and Geoffrey Rowland.