Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi weren't mentioned, but US Air Force Secretary, Troy Meink confirmed the US has space weapons in orbit over the Earth but didn't comment on their capabilities. Meink said the weapons can be used to defend American forces from attacks in space, acknowledging capabilities the Pentagon has largely kept confidential, reports Fox News Digital. The Space Force, established in 2019 as a branch of the US Armed Forces, has "on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action," he said while not commenting about what the weapons are, how they work or when they were deployed. The disclosure marks a shift in how openly the US military talks about weapons in orbit as China and Russia develop their own capabilities to disrupt, disable or destroy satellites, says FOX News Digital. "Is there any question, by anybody, about whether or not the Chinese or Russians have been developing these sorts of weapons?" Meink asked in a room full of reporters after his remarks at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, MD. ."For over a decade, we’ve been talking about the fact, and we have expressed concern, that the Chinese and Russians were developing weapons for space," he said. "We need to focus on making sure we can protect ourselves operating in that environment." Exactly what's up there is a mystery. In the past, US officials have discussed placing weapons in space, including interceptors capable of destroying incoming missiles as part of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense system, introduced in 2025. Meink’s disclosure took the talk a step further, admitting The Space Force has weapons in orbit for "space control," a mission aimed at protecting US access to space and, denying an adversary the ability to use it, reports FOX. The revelation is unusual for Pentagon protocol, which historically has revealed little about the weapons developed for The Space Force, which until now was only that US counter-space capabilities were largely based on the ground. "What the US is going for is a wow factor here," Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Fox News Digital. "Wow. The US has never talked about space weapons like this before." ."That's really what is exceptional and newsworthy about this revelation is the US is saying we're putting weapons in space to make sure that our adversaries can't use space, or to make sure that we can continue to use space." Meink made clear the ambiguity surrounding the weapons is intentional, telling reporters his language was "very well thought out" and declined to say whether the systems are kinetic or non-kinetic, reports Fox News Digital, adding kinetic weapons such as bombs, bullets and missiles physically strike or destroy a target, while non-kinetic systems can disrupt or disable it without blowing it up, like cyber-attacks or radio jams. "There are a lot of factors that roll into how we talk about these things," Meink said, adding publicly revealing a capability can contribute to deterrence while disclosing too much about it can undermine that advantage. "We’re not going to talk about the specifics of what we’re doing, whether we’ve tested it, not tested it, or anything else," he said. "That leaves a wide range of possibilities."
