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Title: America Acknowledges for the First Time: It Has Deployed Weapons In
Space

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/16/2134...

Tuesday U.S. Space Force chief Douglas Schiess said his branch of the U.S.
military operates "on-orbit weapons," reports Reuters, to defend "against
space-enabled attacks." He promised "disciplined and responsible choices"
when scaling America's orbital defense arsenal in the coming years. NPR calls
this week's reveleations "remarkable... after previous warnings about
countries such as Russia possibly weaponizing a global frontier long agreed
in treaties to be used for only peaceful purposes." The revelation comes as
the Trump administration puts a growing focus 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 U.S. weapons in space. Trump said last year that
he expected the system would be "fully operational before the end of my
term," which ends in January 2029, and have the capability of intercepting
missiles "even if they are launched from space." Trump also has directed the
Pentagon to pursue the space-based interceptors, in an executive order during
the first week of his presidency. The Congressional Budget Office estimated
that just the space-based components of the Golden Dome could cost as much as
$542 billion over the next 20 years. The Biden administration announced in
2024 that Russia was developing a space-based nuclear weapon that could
loiter in space for long durations, then release a burst that would take out
satellites around it. That kicked off a renewed debate on the idea of weapons
in space at the United Nations. In April 2024, Russia vetoed a joint U.S.-
Japanese resolution that would have called on all countries not to develop or
deploy nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction in space, as banned
under a 1967 international treaty that included the U.S. and Russia... The
Russian delegation called the resolution hypocritical and a double standard
and instead proposed a rival resolution to ban all weapons in space "for all
time." It ultimately failed. Russia had argued that the United States and its
allies opposed a ban on all weapons in outer space because they planned to
deploy weapons there. Reuters calls this "a landmark moment in space
militarization," while noting that it's "aimed at deterring what U.S.
officials describe as aggressive orbital activities from China and Russia,
officials and analysts said." The remarks this week by Washington's top
military-space officials are part of "the increasing comfort level of the
U.S. government to speak about aggressive actions in space" that has been
building up in recent years, said Victoria Samson, chief director of space
security and stability at the nonprofit Secure World Foundation. "We've gone
from not talking about counter-space capabilities... to now saying flat-out
we have weapons in space," Samson said. "The pendulum keeps on shifting over
that way..." "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.... "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."
Reuters adds that Russia's Foreign Ministry issued criticism of America's
move, saying "In pursuit of its narrow self-interests, Washington is ready to
completely ignore the catastrophic consequences for humanity of any armed
conflict in orbit."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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