US Troops Must Prepare to Fight Around the Moon — 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 be prepared to fight, endure and win "from the seabed to cislunar space" — the area between high Earth orbit and the moon.
- Air Force Secretary Troy Meink revealed at the same conference that the U.S. has fielded "on-orbit space control weapons," marking the first public U.S. confirmation of weapons deployed in space.
- Lt. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, head of Space Force's Combat Forces Command, named the People's Republic of China as an adversary "actively pursuing activities" across parts of space; China established its own military space troops in 2024.
- The cluster of announcements directly challenges decades of international convention — including the 1967 Outer Space Treaty — that have held outer space for peaceful purposes only and kept it non-militarised.
- When pressed on the 1967 treaty and other obligations, Gagnon said the U.S. Space Force "will continue to execute safe and responsible space operations in all the reaches of space" but declined to clarify U.S. policy on projectiles or kinetic weapons in space, deferring to the Pentagon.
- The U.S. aims to double the size of the Space Force to roughly 25,000 service members over the next five years, with about two-thirds of that growth focused on Combat Forces Command.
Why it matters: The U.S. has crossed a rhetorical and doctrinal line: for the first time a top military official is calling for troops to train for combat around the moon while the Air Force confirms deployed orbital weapons, explicitly naming the PRC as the rival forcing the shift. With Space Force set to roughly double to 25,000 personnel and the Pentagon refusing to clarify its stance on projectiles in space, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty's peaceful-use norm is being publicly tested as deterrence doctrine rather than just arms-control aspiration.
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