IN his first term in office, US President Donald Trump announced the creation of the Space Force, a new branch of the US military to add to the existing army, navy, air force, etc. Now, in 2026, not only has the US announced for the first time that it has actually put weapons in space, it has also released the uniforms designed for the Space Force. To no one’s surprise, they look identical to the uniforms of the Imperial Navy in Star Wars. In case you’ve been exiled to Alpha Centauri for the last century, those were the Bad Guys.
Unfortunate Sith parallels aside, the US has not revealed the exact nature of the weaponry but US military leaders have previously spoken about the need for space-based military capabilities, purportedly to counter alleged Russian and Chinese capabilities. In particular, the US has been looking at anti-satellite systems designed to disable or blind an adversary’s eye-in-the-sky capabilities.
That capability has been quite irksome for the US during its disastrous war on Iran, with reports claiming that Chinese and Russian satellites provided information for Iranian drone and missile strikes, enabling pinpoint accuracy when it comes to targeting US assets in the region. And then, a few weeks ago, an orbiting Chinese satellite — Yaogan-50 — disintegrated into over 40 pieces. Was this a coincidence or a demonstration of America’s now-declared capabilities? We’ll likely never know.
Development of space-based weapons continues.
What we do know is that China — which has protested against the US announcement — has tried to develop anti-satellite capabilities of its own likely based on the philosophy that while space-based weapons are difficult to deploy and expensive, countermeasures against enemy satellites may be an easier way out, similar to the philosophy of area denial by fielding anti-ship and aircraft carrier missiles.
In 2007, China successfully targeted an aging weather satellite with a ground-based missile. Next year, the US followed suit by shooting down a military satellite it claimed was about to crash, and in 2010, China shot down another satellite. But since destroying satellites entirely can be messy, capabilities are being developed to ‘blind’ them instead, rendering them useless; along with the US, Russia and China are also developing and deploying ground-based directed-energy weapons and satellite-blinding lasers. The US is already deploying the Meadowlands Counter Communication System which can fry orbital satellites using electromagnetic beams.
In one sense, the first shot in the Space Wars was fired in World War II when German scientists created the V1 and V2 rocket and missile, the predecessors of the cruise and ballistic missiles, but the real push to weaponise space began with the space race where the USSR scored early wins with the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and by making cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin the first man in space four years later.
In 1962, the US conducted a high-altitude nuclear weapons test codenamed Starfish Prime — not just as a warning to the USSR but also to see if the resulting electromagnetic pulse would disrupt nearby satellites. With the spectre of nuclear weapons in space looming large and talk of potential military bases on the moon, the Outer Space Treaty was signed in 1967, prohibiting the placement of nuclear weapons or other WMDs and proclaiming that no country would seek sovereignty over the moon.
But the development of space-based weapons continued nevertheless. In 1974, the Soviets successfully tested the first known armed satellite. The Salyut-3 satellite was equipped with an aircraft cannon from which it fired a single round proving that it was indeed possible to arm satellites although questions of accuracy and feasibility remained.
Over a decade later, the USSR returned to the concept by testing a heavy satellite — the Polyus — which was armed with a carbon-dioxide laser and a cannon to boot. However, it failed to launch.
Then there was Reagan and his ‘Star Wars’ initiative that envisioned a national ballistic missile shield for the US, some components of which would be space-based: the ‘Brilliant Pebbles’ project envisioned the deployment of thousands of small interceptors in orbit that would then collide with Soviet ICBMs — a sort of Patriot Missile system in space. Other proposals included satellites armed with lasers. Whether or not Reagan knew, most of these plans were impossible to implement because of cost and lack of requisite technology. But the USSR took it seriously enough to try and play catch-up. Arguably, the costs thus incurred played a part in the downfall of the Soviet Empire.
But this isn’t the Cold War anymore, and the rapid technological developments we are seeing now mean that ideas once safely relegated to the realm of science fiction are becoming fact. Watch the skies.
The writer is a journalist.
X: @zarrarkhuhro
Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2026
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