The Pentagon must prepare for battles around the moon: Joint Chiefs chair

Days after orbital weapons were revealed, Gen. Dan Caine ups the scope of the military’s desired reach.

Defense One, 16 Sept 26, Thomas Novelly

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.— The U.S. military’s top uniformed leader says U.S. forces must be ready for war near or possibly even on the moon, a rhetorical leap that comes as service leaders are still wrestling with the legal frameworks surrounding its newly revealed orbital weapons.

“Our task, my friends, is to adapt right now, so the Joint Force is prepared to fight, endure, and win, in global contested environments, from the seabed to cislunar space,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine told airmen, guardians, and industry figures during his keynote address at the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference.

Caine later repeated the thought—“today’s modern battlefield operates from the seabed to cislunar space”—but he did not clarify whether he meant on the moon’s surface. U.S. law is ambiguous, defining cislunar space as “the region of space from the Earth out to and including the region around the surface of the moon.” At least one Harvard Law Journal article interprets the clause to mean on the moon itself, and the White House’s National Cislunar Science and Technology Action Plan explicitly said in late 2024 that it includes the lunar surface. But the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 2021 “Primer on Cislunar Space” appears to treat space and the moon’s surface as two different domains.

Caine pointed to recent comments made about orbital weapons by the Air Force secretary and the Space Force’s chief of space operations. Top space force officials have been hesitant to provide more details on how they would operate in that domain and how they’d responsibly use space weapons in future conflicts………………………………..

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which the U.S. signed, outlaws certain military behaviors on the Moon and states that it shall be used “exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

“The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden. The use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited.”

Space Force Lt. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, the head of Combat Forces Command, told reporters during a media roundtable that the 18th and 19th Space Defense Squadrons are now both sharing the cislunar mission among each other. ………………………https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2026/09/pentagon-battles-moon-joint-chiefs-chairman/416021/?oref=d1-skybox-post