the annual conference of the U.S. Air and Space Forces Association, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Minnek made a rare public statement: the United States possesses "orbital" weapons for space domination, capable of defending its forces against any hostile action. However, he stopped there. When asked about the nature of these weapons and whether they had even been tested, he declined to answer, saying the wording was deliberate and that his department spends considerable time considering how to address such matters.
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The term “space domination” has a specific meaning in the lexicon of the U.S. Space Force, the military branch established in 2019 under Trump’s first administration. It includes destructive and non-destructive means used to disrupt, weaken, or destroy an adversary’s capabilities in space, both defensively and offensively, as required by U.S. combat commanders.
"This is how the news reaches us, half-finished, as the weapon is announced but nothing is known about it."
Thus, the news reaches us half-baked, as the weapon is announced but nothing is known about it—neither its form, nor its quantity, nor its launch date, nor even whether it has been tested even once. Prior to this statement, Washington had only acknowledged, with this degree of clarity, ground-based anti-satellite weapons, which are jamming devices that disrupt satellite signals without touching the satellite itself.
The announcement comes as the US Congress considers a budget request for the fiscal year beginning in October that would nearly double the Space Force's budget to $71.2 billion, allocating $21.6 billion of that to space control systems alone. This raises a specific question: Is there really a weapon orbiting the Earth capable of fulfilling its stated mission of protecting US forces from the hundreds of Chinese satellites whose purpose is to observe and track those forces?
General Chance Saltzman, commander of U.S. space operations, sat before the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Senator John Boozman asked him about the return the Pentagon had made from the money Congress added to the classified Space Force budget in fiscal year 2023. Saltzman did not name a program or a number, but he said that the next few years would see "significant orbital capability" that would allow the Space Force to attack and defend in space by 2026, which he called "full-spectrum operations."
Saltzman confirmed this a few days later in a press conference. The Space Force had requested $327 million in unfunded priority funding for classified programs, which Congress approved. The Space Force did not disclose any further details about these programs. Two years later, in April 2025, the Space Force released a 22-page document titled "Warfare in Space.
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