US admits it has weapons in orbit: How do they work and should Russia and China be worried?

The United States has admitted for the first time that it has weapons deployed in orbit, revealing previously undisclosed military capabilities in space.

US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said on Monday that Washington now possesses “orbital space control weapons” that could protect US forces from hostile action.

Meink revealed this while speaking at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Maryland. However, he did not reveal what kind of weapon it was and when it was deployed.

“This is why the United States now has space control weapons in orbit capable of defending joint forces against hostile action,” Meink said.

Why does the US keep the weapon a secret?

Meink said the decision to reveal the weapon’s existence was deliberate and aimed at deterring potential adversaries. He later told reporters that providing more details could weaken its deterrent effect.

According to The War Zone (TWZ), Meink declined to discuss the weapon’s design, capabilities, testing or the type of targets it could potentially hit at a press roundtable.

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The US Space Force later offered a broader explanation of what “space control” meant. She said the term includes missions aimed at challenging and controlling activity in space using both kinetic and non-kinetic methods.

How do guns work?

According to Space Force, such capabilities could be used to disrupt, degrade or, if necessary, destroy an adversary’s space systems. They can serve both offensive and defensive purposes, including technologies capable of interfering with satellites without physically destroying them.

The lack of details has fueled speculation about the nature of the newly recognized system.

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Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation told the Financial Times that the weapon could be a space jammer. She noted that the US has generally tried to avoid kinetic attacks on satellites because destroying spacecraft can create dangerous debris in orbit.

But Clayton Swope of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said the announcement was too broad to create a clear deterrent threat.

He argued that countries like China and Russia would need at least a general understanding of the weapon’s destructive capability and the circumstances under which Washington might use it to properly assess the threat.

Russia and China, the two main geopolitical rivals of the United States, are seen as potential threats to America’s interests in space.

According to the US Space Force, China is “developing and operating space and anti-space capabilities as part of a military modernization strategy”, while Russia “views space as a war-fighting domain and believes that space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts”.

The US, Russia and China are racing to develop space weapons

In 2024, the US reported that Russia had put a satellite into orbit that it believed could potentially attack other spacecraft.

Recently, reports suggested that two Russian satellites may have intercepted communications from at least a dozen European satellites since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

China is also developing anti-space technologies designed to disrupt or disable adversary satellites.

The US itself is increasingly open about developing offensive space capabilities. In 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order strengthening the Space Force’s responsibility to protect America’s space assets and develop capabilities to attack adversary systems.

Space militarization dates back to the Cold War

Military competition in space began concurrently with the space race. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit in 1957, both Washington and Moscow began exploring ways to deploy weapons in space, as well as ways to disable or destroy satellites.

Nuclear weapons were initially considered the greatest threat in orbit. However, the United States, the Soviet Union and other countries signed the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, which prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in orbit.

Satellites remain key military targets

Despite the treaty, the major powers continued to develop capabilities that could be used in conflicts beyond its limitations. Russia, the US, China and India have explored technologies aimed at targeting or disrupting satellites operated by rival countries.

Satellites play a key role in modern military operations, supporting communications, surveillance and navigation. Their growing importance has made space an increasingly contested domain for major military powers.