nuclear-news

US keeps boasting about militarizing space 60 years after Outer Space Treaty

The intention remains the same as decades prior – militarize space under the guise of “defense”.

Saturday, September 19, 2026, Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst, https://infobrics.org/en/post/103080

In recent days and weeks, the United States has openly started boasting about having orbital weapons, in direct violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), which effectively forbids the militarization of space. The mainstream propaganda machine has been trying to whitewash the Pentagon, claiming that this supposedly “ends decades of official ambiguity” about American military capabilities in space. However, many of my esteemed colleagues and I have been writing for years about US violations in space. According to US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, Washington DC already has “on-orbit space control weapons” and that these are supposedly “intended to defend American forces against hostile action”. The US Space Force claims that these systems are “able to deliver disruption, degradation and even destruction of an adversary”.

The Pentagon is yet to reveal details about the types of weapons it operates in space, meaning we have no information on how long the US has had this capability or how many systems have been deployed. American officials have only talked about what they call “space control”, which is too broad a term to allow a better understanding of what kind of weapons we’re dealing with.

The US claims that “it’s important from a deterrence perspective”. In simpler terms, it’s virtually guaranteed that the system in question is offensive-oriented, as the vast majority of American weapons already are. The announcement also demonstrates Washington DC’s endless hypocrisy, as it spent years accusing others of militarizing space, particularly Russia and China. It’s now unequivocally clear these “warnings” were nothing but crocodile tears.

The Pentagon is now saying that the use of its space weapons “could extend to disabling or destroying an adversary satellite if it were being used to target American troops or a US spacecraft”. Obviously, this is yet another example of the aforementioned endless hypocrisy, as Washington DC has been using its own space capabilities to wage war against Russia during the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. This includes the employment of systems such as SpaceX’s “Starlink”, which the Neo-Nazi junta forces use to guide drones against the Russian military and civilians. Unsurprisingly, the US still lives in the illusion that killing soldiers and civilians in other countries is “perfectly fine”, but won’t tolerate similar actions against its own occupation forces all across the planet (literally dozens of countries in the last several decades).

It should also be noted that Washington DC has been the main driving force behind the militarization of space for around half a century at this point. During the (First) Cold War, this culminated with the Reagan administration’s much-touted SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) program, now better known under its more popular name – “Star Wars”. On paper, it was one of the most ambitious military and space programs ever undertaken by any country. However, many of the projects formally launched by the US at the time never really left the drawing board. It later even turned out that the SDI was largely a PR stunt aimed at pushing Russia into yet another expensive arms and space race. It could be argued that it worked to some extent, as Moscow actually built space-based weapons, including orbital lasers.

Namely, back in 1987, Russia launched a laser-armed spacecraft called the “Polyus/Skif-DM”. Although the program was scrapped due to the unfortunate dismantling of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin kept its know-how. The US was quite lucky that the USSR didn’t get to implement its unprecedented space projects during the 1990s, as many of these were more ambitious and far exceeded the best space tech available even today. However, Washington DC has long been determined to militarize space, confident that its massive private space sector gives it an edge over the rest of the world. This notion is not entirely without merit, as neither Russia nor China have comparable private ventures with investment on such a scale (although both superpowers still have colossal state-run space programs and aren’t too keen on privatizing them).

On the other hand, while private space ventures aren’t always the best to rely on when it comes to strategic projects, the US is uniquely positioned to do so. Namely, its massive Military Industrial Complex (MIC) would be more than happy to lead the charge in the militarization of space, as this means countless billions more in funding for decades to come. Elon Musk’s erstwhile political alliance with Donald Trump could easily be resurrected, giving the former a major head start in virtually all American space projects. This would also further integrate SpaceX with the Pentagon at a time when its budget keeps growing. Not to mention that just a week after his inauguration, Trump pompously announced that “the construction of a state-of-the-art ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense shield will begin immediately and will be made right here in the USA 100%”.

It later turned out it was actually the “Golden Dome” and that he simply mixed up the name with the better-known Israeli system. However, the intention was the same as decades prior – militarize space under the guise of “defense”. Trump actually said that the system would “protect Americans” and noted that “President Ronald Reagan was interested in such a system during the Cold War, but America didn’t have the technology at the time”. Mentioning the SDI is quite peculiar, as it raises several important questions, the first of which is how viable this new “space defense” would be. Although the technologies required to implement some SDI elements exist nowadays, this is still extremely expensive, while its efficiency is just as questionable as it was 40 years ago. On the other hand, war is “good for business”, as Trump himself said several times.

September 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | space travel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Weapons in Space

The cost for the Golden Dome system would runs as high as $3.6 trillion as estimated by the American Enterprise Institute. Taxpayers for Common Sense, also based in Washington, in its report this year titled “Missing the Mark: Why Golden Dome is Bad for American Taxpayers” says: “Pursuing Golden Dome also poses serious strategic risks, including the potential to accelerate nuclear arms and space arms races and to undermine opportunities to secure verifiable arms control agreements that reduce the nuclear threat. The program has also raised troubling conflict-of-interest concerns involving individuals within the Trump Administration and companies vying for Golden Dome contracts.”

“Taxpayers should be wondering who will pay for the trillions of dollars” for this and other “offensive space programs—especially when the U.S. is $40 trillion in debt.”

Karl Grossman, CounterPuchSeptember 21, 2026

“U.S. says for 1st time it now has weapons in space” was the headline last week in USA Today. The subhead: “Air Force Secretary Troy Meink became the first U.S. official to publicly announce that the military has deployed weapons to space.” The article Tuesday began: “The U.S. has confirmed in a landmark revelation that the nation has deployed operational weapons in space.”

It was news that swept the world.

The headline in the British newspaper, The Guardian: “U.S. confirms for first time it has deployed weapons in space.” The subhead: “Analysts warn of an acceleration in high-risk arms race with Russia and China in Earth’s orbit.”

It should not have come as a surprise.

As the Associated Press reported Wednesday: “The revelation comes as the Trump administration puts a growing focus on space. In 2019, during his first term, Trump created the Space Force as a separate military branch. In his second term, he has announced the ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense system, which includes plans to put U.S. weapons in space.”

An earlier AP story published just after Donald Trump took office a second time, also reported on “plans to put U.S. weapons in space” as part of its planned “Golden Dome” program. This article by Tara Copp, an AP Pentagon and national security correspondent, said the “system was ordered by Trump during his first week in office, and if successful, would mark the first time the U.S. would place weapons in space that are meant to destroy ground-based missiles within seconds of launch.”

Trump is seeking U.S. “superiority” in space as he stated in an executive order titled “Ensuring American Space Superiority.” Issued in December 2025, in it Trump asserted: “Superiority in space is a measure of national vision and willpower.”

In his Secretary of War Peter Hegseth, Trump has a highly aggressive partner in this aim. As Hegseth said in a tour of U.S. aerospace companies in February 2026: “We have to dominate the ultimate high ground.” He also declared on that speaking tour: “The fight for space is the fight for the future of the world as we know it” and “We cannot afford to have a fair fight in space—I’m not interested in orbital parity. We demand orbital dominance plain and simple. Whoever controls space controls the fight.”

Adding to the acknowledgement of the U.S. deploying weapons in space, the AP also reported last week: “American troops need to prepare for combat not only in Earth’s orbit but around the moon, President Donald Trump’s top military adviser said Wednesday, looking ahead to a new frontier in warfare after the U.S. revealed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told service members and industry figures at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference outside Washington that the U.S. military should adapt now so it “is prepared to fight, endure and win … from the seabed to cislunar space.” Cislunar space, AP added, “is a term that described the region between the Earth’s surface and the moon.”

Not only is none of this new or going back just a few days or years. It goes back many years.

As Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, noted in an interview, plans by the U.S. for dominating space go back decades. The Trump administration is conducting a major replay of these plans.

Gagnon cited, as an example, the “Vision for 2020” plan released in 1998 by the U.S. Space Command, the predecessor of the U.S. Space Force. It’s best to be seen to be believed. It can be viewed here.

“Vision for 2020” opens with a photo of four-star General Howell M. Estes, commander in chief of the Space Command, saying the publication “serves as a bridge in the evolution of military space into the 2lst Century.”

Below those words of Estes and presented like the crawl in the “Star Wars” movies is: “U.S. Space Command—dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict.”

Yes, “to protect U.S. interests and investment.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The weaponization of space is a violation of the intent of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Created by the U.S., United Kingdom and former Soviet Union—it. as The Planetary Society, based in Pasadena, California, explains, “is an international agreement that governs how nations act in space. Formally known as the ‘Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies,’ it is one of international space law’s foundational documents. The overall purpose of the Outer Space Treaty is to keep space peaceful.”

There have been repeated attempts since at the United Nations to pass a resolution titled “Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space” (PAROS) to assure that space be used for peaceful purposes. As notes the Federation of American Scientists, based in Washington, PAROS “reaffirms the fundamental principles of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and advocates for a ban on the weaponization of space.” It was first passed at the U.N. General Assembly in1981 by a vote of 129 in favor, zero against and 13 abstentions.

But the PAROS agreement to be enacted requires a unanimous vote in favor by the UN’s Conference on Disarmament which consists of 65 nations based on global regions. The U.S. has continually balked on supporting PAROS, and without unanimity it cannot be approved. I have been in Geneva and watched, as at a meeting of the Conference, the U.S. representative announcing the U.S. would not support PAROS.

Meanwhile, the argument by the U.S.—including in recent days with the acknowledgement by the U.S. of it deploying weapons in space—is that there is a threat of Russia and China doing this.

“This is a flagrant in-your-face lie,” says Alice Slater, a member of the board of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space and an attorney.

She faults media generally for “parroting” the U.S. claim and “disregarding the constant effort” by Russia and China to get the PAROS agreement enacted.

She also cites the “joint statement” by Russia and China last year upon, as its heading notes, the “80^th anniversary of the victory in the Second World War,” in which the U.S., Soviet Union and China were allies. “The two sides [Russia and China] oppose the attempts of individual countries to use outer space for armed confrontation,” says their statement. It cites the need for the PAROS agreement “that would provide fundamental and reliable guarantees of preventing an arms race in outer space, weaponization of outer space.”

Immediately following the acknowledgement by the U.S. of having weapons in space, The New York Times reported a Russian government spokesperson saying, “We believe that space must be free of any weapons,” and a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry saying: “We urge the U.S. side to stop…preparing for war in outer space,” and that China opposed an “outer space arms race.”

Gagnon, the coordinator of the Maine-based Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, said he believes the U.S. has acknowledged its deployment of weapons in space in a move to “make Golden Dome sound inevitable thus forcing Congress to appropriate the massive funds to secure the controversial project in the Pentagon pipeline.”

The cost for the Golden Dome system would runs as high as $3.6 trillion as estimated by the American Enterprise Institute. Taxpayers for Common Sense, also based in Washington, in its report this year titled “Missing the Mark: Why Golden Dome is Bad for American Taxpayers” says: “Pursuing Golden Dome also poses serious strategic risks, including the potential to accelerate nuclear arms and space arms races and to undermine opportunities to secure verifiable arms control agreements that reduce the nuclear threat. The program has also raised troubling conflict-of-interest concerns involving individuals within the Trump Administration and companies vying for Golden Dome contracts.”

Said Gagnon: “Taxpayers should be wondering who will pay for the trillions of dollars” for this and other “offensive space programs—especially when the U.S. is $40 trillion in debt.” He said “the aerospace industry long ago identified the ‘entitlement programs’ as their preferred source of funds” and “taking from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the now tattered social safety net.”

As to consequences of war in space, he told of Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell—“the sixth person to walk on the moon”—speaking at a “peace in space rally I organized in the now re-named Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Mitchell told the assembled that a war in space would be the ‘one and only’ because so much space junk would be created—on top of the existing huge debris field—that we would not be able to get a rocket through the deadly trash orbiting the Earth. He said it would be like trying to ‘get through a piranha-laced river’ in the Amazon.”

Gagnon spoke of “a spiritual disconnection in the minds and hearts of those ‘leaders’ in Washington who believe that 4% of the global population in the U.S. should be the ‘Masters of Space’ [the motto of the Space Delta 8 unit of the U.S. Space Force]. It is a deep sickness. The time has come for the American people to take the toys away from the boys.”

The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space was formed at a meeting in Washington, D.C. in 1992. Each year it holds a “Keep Space for Peace Week,” this year between October 3 to 10, with events. The 2026 theme is “Space Is a Global Commons—Not To Be Dominated.” The Global Network’s website is at space4peace.org.

A book I authored, published in 2001, Weapons in Space, quotes Gagnon as saying: “If the U.S. is allowed to move the arms race into space, there will be no return. We have this one chance, this one moment in history, to stop the weaponization of space from happening.”

Similar warnings are made by Gagnon and others in TV documentaries I wrote and presented: Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens, first out in 1995 and viewable now, and Star Wars Returns, out in 2012, which can be seen here.

I concluded another book I wrote, The Wrong Stuff, published in 1997, with: “As for space weaponry, we are living at an historic junction. We have the opportunity now to halt the expansion of a new round of the arms race into space. The Star Wars of the Reagan administration is clearly not over, as the U.S. military seeks to attain the ‘ultimate high ground’ and with nuclear-powered weaponry to dominate space and the Earth below. We have a chance to stop something wrong and dangerous before it happens, before it is too late.”

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, and the Beyond Nuclear handbook, The U.S. Space Force and the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war in space. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

September 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | space travel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The United States claims to now have space weapons and to prepare to fight around the Moon

Voltaire International Newsletter
Fri, 18 Sep 2026, https://www.sott.net/article/508501-The-United-States-claims-to-now-have-space-weapons-and-to-prepare-to-fight-around-the-Moon

US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said on September 14, 2026, at the National Harbor Air, Space & Cyber Conference that:

“The United States now has space control weapons in orbit capable of defending joint forces against hostile action.

“For more than a decade, we have expressed our concern about the development of space weapons by the Chinese, Russians and other countries. We are working to ensure our protection and our ability to operate in this environment, as we have done for decades.”

Contrary to Troy Meink’s statements, Russia and China have always claimed that they do not deploy weapons in space. By signing the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the United States committed itself not to place weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said at the end of the conference:

“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.

“Our United States Space Force must provide unrivaled space superiority and sustain the associated networks, domain awareness, data advantage that the joint force needs to win in space both now and in the future.

“We must now assume that our forces will be tracked by autonomous systems, scrambled across the entire spectrum and tracked in real time.

“AI is already a reality and it is transforming the way the armed forces perceive, analyze, decide and act.”

Comment: USA has deployed first space-based weapon:

The United States now has an “on orbit” space weapon and will use it to protect American forces, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced Monday, in a not-so-subtle warning to China and Russia.

It marked the first time the United States has acknowledged it has its own offensive capability in space after years of warning that China and Russia have been practicing offensive maneuvers in orbit, such as using lasers or jamming that put U.S. satellites at risk.

Meink would not specify what type of weapon is now in space but hinted that it will be used for “space control.” A U.S. official said it could include the military taking out an enemy’s satellite if it’s being used to target American troops or a U.S. satellite.

The United States also is developing a web of space-based missiles that are envisioned as part of the future Golden Dome missile defense system.

Meink would not elaborate on why the disclosure of the new U.S. capability was being made now, saying only that “there’s a lot of factors that go into how we talk about these things. It’s important from a deterrence perspective.”

September 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | space travel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment