US Says It Has Weapons in Orbit, Drawing Warnings From China and Russia

The United States has confirmed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space, a disclosure the Trump administration made this week and one that Beijing and Moscow answered within a day.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the country has fielded "on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action," The Associated Press reported. He spoke Monday at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

Meink said nothing about what the weapons are, how they work, when they went up, or whether they target objects in orbit or on the ground. Asked afterward about his phrasing, he said the wording had been carefully chosen, according to Air and Space Forces Magazine. The Space Force declined to say whether the systems are kinetic.

China objected the next day. Foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun warned against the weaponization of outer space and urged Washington to "stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space," CBS News reported.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said space must remain free of any weapons and called for broad international work toward full demilitarization, RTE reported. Russia's foreign ministry said the American acknowledgment ignored the consequences of a conflict in orbit.

Both governments have themselves been accused of building offensive counterspace systems. In 2024 the United States assessed that Russia was developing a space-based nuclear weapon capable of loitering in orbit.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction from orbit. It says nothing explicit about conventional ones, which leaves anti-satellite systems and electronic warfare tools outside its reach.

Analysts described the announcement as an open secret finally spoken aloud. Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation told CNBC the statement was destabilizing, and told Al Jazeera that its main effect is to normalize weapons in orbit.

The disclosure lands as the Pentagon builds Golden Dome, the missile defense system Trump wants operational before January 2029. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the space-based components alone could cost up to $542 billion over 20 years.