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By Denis Staunton,
Published by The Irish Times, 21 September 2026
Washington’s declaration that it has deployed weapons in space was meant as a warning to China and Russia. It could backfire.
When the United States announced last week that it had deployed weapons in space, the reaction from China and Russia, the world’s second- and third-biggest military powers, was swift and emphatic. China’s foreign ministry warned against weaponising space and turning it into a battlefield while Russia accused Washington of ignoring the catastrophic consequences for humanity of an armed conflict in orbit.
At the Xiangshan Forum security conference in Beijing the day after the US announcement, Guo Xiaobing, director of the Centre for Arms Control Studies with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said Washington had broken a taboo.
“That’s the taboo about the deployment of conventional weapons in space. That taboo was broken yesterday. We are at a breaking point in history,” he said.
When US Air Force secretary Troy Meink, the civilian head of both the US Air Force and Space Force, made the announcement last week he said it was critically important that Washington should maintain its dominance not only in the air but in space.
“We are increasing readiness against existing threats, and the United States has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action,” he said.
Space Force, which Donald Trump established during his first term as a distinct branch of the armed forces, defines space control as the activities required to achieve “space superiority, a degree of control that allows forces to operate at a time and place of their choosing” without interference from adversaries.
Meink did not specify the nature of the weapons deployed but most expert commentary last week assumed he was referring to non-kinetic systems such as jammers and spoofers designed to interfere with the operation of satellites rather than kinetic ones designed to crash into them or blow them up.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans countries from placing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in orbit but it does not restrict the deployment of conventional weapons. Russia, with the support of China, tried two years ago at the United Nations to extend the ban to all weapons but they were blocked by the US and Britain, which argued that it was too difficult to define what a weapon was.
The truth is that space has been militarised for decades and contemporary warfare relies heavily on satellites for intelligence and for the targeting of missiles and drones in theatres such as Ukraine and the Gulf. The US, China and Russia have all developed anti-satellite systems, some of them ground based but others operating in orbit and designed to interfere with adversaries’ satellites.
The main disincentive for any power to use weapons that could physically destroy a satellite is the debris produced, which can linger in space for years with the potential to set off a string of collisions. The US accounts for 75 per cent of the more than 16,000 active satellites currently orbiting the Earth (two out of three are internet satellites from Elon Musk’s Starlink) making it more vulnerable than others to the consequences of debris in space.
Meink made clear that his announcement was meant as a warning to China and Russia, which he said were also developing weapons for space. It comes as the US is committed to building the Golden Dome, a missile defence system based on Israel’s Iron Dome designed to intercept missiles from anywhere in the world.
The trouble with plans like the Golden Dome is that making the US invulnerable to attack leaves everyone else more exposed because they would be unable to retaliate effectively against any American action.
Last week’s declaration that the US has deployed weapons in space may have been designed to deter China and Russia but it is more likely to encourage them to accelerate their development of systems to counter them.
See: Original Article
