By Sam Hamad

 

WASHINGTON, 18 Sept. - (ANA) - The US has acknowledged that it has weapons deployed in orbit, offering a rare glimpse into a rapidly developing military competition that could transform space into a new battlefield.

 

US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said this week that Washington possesses "on-orbit space control weapons", but declined to reveal what the systems are or precisely what they can do.

 

The disclosure does not mean the US has missiles or bombs circling the Earth ready to strike targets below. "Space control" encompasses capabilities designed to protect American satellites or disrupt, disable and potentially destroy those belonging to an adversary.

 

But it comes amid an accelerating military competition involving the US, China and Russia - and growing interest from other powers in technologies once largely confined to science fiction.

 

Israel, meanwhile, has gone further in publicly describing its ambitions. Defence Minister Israel Katz has called for the country to become the first capable of attacking targets on Earth directly from space.

 

 

 

 

Modern militaries are deeply dependent on satellites for communications, navigation, missile warnings, surveillance and targeting.

 

Destroying or disrupting those systems could therefore blind or severely hamper an adversary without directly attacking its forces.

 

Space weapons can range from electronic jamming and cyberattacks to lasers, anti-satellite missiles and spacecraft potentially capable of physically disabling other satellites.

 

China and Russia have invested heavily in counter-space capabilities, while India demonstrated an anti-satellite missile in 2019.

 

The US and China have also developed manoeuvrable satellites capable of approaching other objects in orbit. Such rendezvous technology has legitimate uses but could theoretically allow one spacecraft to interfere with another.

 

 

 

 

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits countries from placing nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit.

 

It does not, however, comprehensively ban conventional weapons there, leaving considerable room for technologies barely conceivable when the treaty was written.

 

Once one major power openly acknowledges deploying military systems in orbit, rivals have an obvious incentive to develop ways of destroying them - and protecting their own.

 

 

 

 

China and Russia are Washington's principal competitors, but the technology is no longer solely the preserve of the world's largest powers.

 

Israel has already made clear that it wants to take the next and potentially more consequential step: attacking Earth from above.

 

"We also need to operate from up there toward the earth: by disrupting systems, which will happen sooner, and also with kinetic attacks," Katz recently told a conference in Israel.

 

"Today, no country has the capability for a space-based attack, so I've declared for the defence establishment the need to be first in attack."

 

Israel already possesses an advanced military space programme, including reconnaissance satellites, while its Arrow 3 missile defence system has intercepted ballistic missiles outside the Earth's atmosphere.

 

But firing a weapon from Earth into space is fundamentally different from stationing a weapon in orbit capable of striking Earth. Katz's proposal would cross that threshold.

 

The prospect carries particular significance following Israel's genocidal war on Gaza and its expansion of military operations across the Middle East, including attacks on Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.

 

The Israeli defence establishment is reportedly developing a wider programme to strengthen its space capabilities, with around 16 billion shekels ($5.4 billion) in investment contemplated over the next decade.

 

 

 

 

The concept has existed for decades.

 

One of the most notorious proposals is nicknamed "Rods from God": placing enormous tungsten projectiles in orbit and releasing them towards targets on Earth, deriving their destructive power from the immense velocity reached during descent.

 

Versions have been studied in the US, but huge launch costs and engineering difficulties have prevented such a weapon becoming operational.

 

Reusable rockets and the dramatic fall in the cost of reaching orbit have nevertheless changed calculations about what might eventually be feasible.

 

Other concepts are closer to existing technology. Satellites could carry interceptors designed to destroy missiles during flight, while lasers, electronic warfare and manoeuvrable spacecraft could attack or disable other space systems.

 

For now, an important boundary remains. Space can dramatically change the nature of warfare on Earth, but there is no publicly confirmed operational system raining conventional firepower from above.

 

The significance of Washington's disclosure is not that science-fiction warfare has suddenly arrived. It is that some of the architecture required for a battlefield in orbit is already being assembled.

 

As the US, China, Russia and increasingly countries such as Israel compete for military advantage above the atmosphere, the question may be shifting from whether space will be weaponised to how far that weaponisation will go.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/18 September 2026 - -