NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The United States has orbital space weapons, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said on Monday.
“What’s becoming even more important as we move forward is sensing and command and control — everything we’re talking about doing from long-range fires and control of our forces, the space capability —maintaining and being able to count on those space capabilities is important,” Meink told the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual conference. “And, as everybody knows, there have been many developing capabilities to take those away from us.”
Meink declined to go into specifics on those space weapons.
The assertion that the U.S. has space weapons marks a significant departure, as U.S. officials have always left a question mark when asked about the existence of such weapons in a nod to what those officials saw as a bolstering of deterrence.
In Monday’s address, Meink also said that launches of the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indication (SB-AMTI) constellation would begin this month.
Before going public in June, SpaceX received a nearly $4.2 billion contract for the initial fielding of SB-AMTI. In April, the Space Force said it had awarded nine firms, including SpaceX, small contracts for SB-AMTI development.
Last month, Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) said it had awarded $615 million in Other Transaction Authority contracts for SB-AMTI to Rocket Lab, STR, and a company unnamed by SSC for “operational security” reasons.
