US Military Preps Combat Ops to the Moon, Caine Says — SkimNews
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- Gen. Dan Caine, Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Air, Space and Cyber Conference on September 16, 2026, that U.S. troops must prepare to fight "from the seabed to cislunar space"
- Lt. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, head of Space Force's Combat Forces Command, said the force is preparing to defend U.S. interests around the moon because "humanity is advancing deeper into space"
- Air Force Secretary Troy Meink revealed at the same conference that the U.S. has fielded "on-orbit space control weapons" — the first such public admission
- Space Force plans to roughly double in size to about 25,000 service members over five years, with two-thirds of that growth focused on Combat Forces Command
- Lt. Gen. Gagnon cited the People's Republic of China as actively pursuing military space activities, noting Beijing established its own military space troops in 2024
- When pressed on the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, Gagnon declined to state U.S. policy on kinetic weapons like bullets or projectiles in space and directed questions to the Pentagon, which did not respond
Why it matters: The U.S. has now publicly confirmed deploying weapons in orbit and is openly planning combat operations out to lunar distance, naming China as the trigger — effectively repudiating decades of treating space as a non-militarized domain. With Space Force set to grow to roughly 25,000 and the Pentagon yet to state its own rules on kinetic space weapons, the policy vacuum itself becomes the story.
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