By The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
20 September 2026
The disclosure by US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink that the US has deployed space weapons in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) confirmed what many had always thought and is a consequence of the competition between the USA and Russia-China over access to LEO. Whoever controls the increasingly limited parking spaces in LEO will be at a considerable advantage and will be able to see and direct weapons not only to targets in space but also on the Earth.
Elon Musk is being paid to fill up LEO with military satellites as fast as possible for the US.
The US Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) with huge radars in Texas, Australia and possibly Wales — where grassroots opposition is massive — would be part of a system to guide anti-satellite weapons (ASATS) to hit targeted satellites in space.
Other options for the US appear to be space-based lasers and electro-magnetic guns to blind or fry spacecraft electronics.
The Trump administration’s proposed “Golden Dome” system is bringing lots of lucrative contracts to aerospace companies but is nowhere near likely to be completed by Trump’s end of term. The American Physical Society and the Congressional Budget Office also report it would cost trillions of dollars and would not likely be effective against Russian or Chinese hypersonic missiles.
However, Meink’s announcement could really be about attempting to make Golden Dome sound inevitable, thereby forcing Congress to appropriate the massive funds needed to secure the controversial project in the Pentagon’s space strategy.
One other long-term issue is the “mining the sky program.” The US and its fellow NATO allies want to move their 500-year western colonial domination to the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies for resource extraction. During a keynote speech at the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said,
“the Joint Force is prepared to fight, endure, and win in global contested environments from the seabed to cislunar space”. Cislunar space is the space between the Earth and the Moon.
The plan is to establish nuclear powered mining colonies. Nuclear powered rocket engines are being currently developed to cut-in-half the amount of time it would take to get to Mars. The Department of Energy labs that fabricate these space nuclear devices have a long history of worker, air, and water contamination.
The 1989 Congressional study entitled “Military Space Forces: The Next 50 Years” called for the US to control the pathway off Earth to space (also called the Earth-Moon Gravity Well).
As the Space Command’s ‘Vision for 2020’ stated, the US must “control and dominate space” and “deny” others the use of space. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recently stated,
“I’m not interested in orbital equity or parity. We demand orbital dominance plain and simple.” Those are fighting words.
In the end, the taxpayers should be wondering who will pay for the trillions of dollars for these collective offensive space programs – especially when the US is already over $40 trillion in debt! Long ago the aerospace industry identified the “entitlement programs” as their preferred source of funds to pay these enormous costs. By this they mean Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the now tattered social safety net. Trump has announced that the already fiscally strapped states should take over Medicare and Medicaid due to recent war spending.
In 1989 Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell (the 6th person to walk on the moon) spoke at a peace in space rally organized by Bruce Gagnon at the now re-named Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Mitchell told the assembled that a war in space would be the “one and only” because so much space junk would be created (on top of the existing huge debris field) that we would not be able to get a rocket thru the deadly space trash orbiting the Earth. He said it would be like trying to “get thru a piranha laced river” in the Amazon.
There is a name today for this phenomenon – the Kessler Syndrome. Much of life on Earth would grind to a halt as the satellites that make our high-tech world function would be smashed to bits.
The 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty, signed and ratified by 118 states, including the US, calls for the peaceful use of outer space, prohibiting the deployment of any weapon of mass destruction and preventing anyone from claiming sovereign control. However, it does not prevent the stationing of other types of weapons in space. The US has repeatedly voted against a resolution, supported by China and Russia, for “no first placement of weapons in outer space”– and now we know why – and for many years the US and Israel have also voted against the annual call by China, Russia and others to negotiate a new treaty on PAROS – the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space. The official position of the US has been, “There are no weapons in space, we don’t need a new treaty.”
We see this as a spiritual disconnection in the minds and hearts of those “leaders” in Washington who believe that 4% of the global population living in the US should be the Masters of Space. It is a deep sickness.
Space should be a realm for exploration and inspiration, a place for humans to grow further in knowledge and wisdom. A few morally impoverished souls are ruining space even as they poison the earth. This will not end well.
The time has come for people in the US to rise up and demand their government halt the fascist march of the human race to annihilation.
