Trump’s military is quietly pursuing attack weapons in orbit. Here’s how that could affect Colorado. ...Middle East

Building powerful new orbital weapons to attack enemy satellites is one of the Trump administration’s most significant — but least publicly discussed — military priorities.

Devised over the past few months by Trump aides and outside advisers, the initiative promises a dramatic shift from the Pentagon’s historic reliance on defensive systems circling the Earth to an extensive and potent arsenal of offensive on-orbit capabilities.

Such plans for deterrence have received scant media attention so far, despite escalating concerns about threats from Russia and China outside the atmosphere. If implemented, the effort would overturn former President Joe Biden’s focus on deploying swarms of smaller, more nimble and extra resilient satellites as the primary protection against space adversaries.

Unlike the deluge of Trump administration executive orders and directives affecting trade, immigration, environmental rules and minority policies, neither the scope nor details of the still-evolving satellite strategy have been announced. Specifics await pending budget deliberations and Senate confirmation of senior civilian Air Force and Defense Department nominees.

But according to several people participating in or briefed on the deliberations, plans circulating inside the Pentagon and White House envision an unparalleled surge in a wide range of offensive weaponry.

The concept, among other elements, includes military satellites designed to grapple, bump or disable enemy spacecraft, according to four senior Trump advisers, industry officials or former high-ranking uniformed officers. Others who have reviewed portions of the plans say they also encompass techniques to warn commanders when U.S. satellites are under potentially hostile tracking or targeting. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the deliberations and plans. 

Whatever plans are finalized undoubtedly will have strong links to Colorado and its network of U.S. Space Force bases, technical centers and operational facilities.

Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, for example, is expected to oversee major technical and policy issues; U.S. Space Command, headquartered there, is poised to enhance cooperative efforts with overseas allies; and steps to coordinate new programs with legacy contracts, according to experts, are likely to involve companies such as Palantir Technologies Inc., based in Denver. Palantir is a major supplier of artificial intelligence and other digital services to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. Defense officials and lawmakers in Washington also are poised to debate the merits of relocating Space Command headquarters to Alabama.

The paperwork, research and acquisition contracts would reverse Biden-era policies that strictly barred deployment or even small-scale testing of practically any offensive hardware in orbit, according to former senior defense officials, ex-industry executives and other space experts.

Potentially available in a few years, the proposed systems would provide relatively swift and affordable responses to Moscow and Beijing, which launched similar prototypes in the past. Their experiments ranged from warheads targeting spy satellites to lasers able to blind spy networks. China’s in-orbit fleet, for instance, has ballooned to more than 300 imaging satellites from just a few dozen roughly 15 years ago. Those and other developments are prompting current uniformed commanders to telegraph offensive plans, but so far only in general terms. 

Gen. Michael Guetlein, the Space Force’s second highest-ranking officer, has used dramatic terms to warn of escalating Chinese threats. Beijing is connecting space weapons with advanced sensors and communication links that, he says, put U.S. forces in persistent jeopardy. The risks stretch “across multiple domains” and pose “a very sophisticated and challenging threat.”

President Donald Trump in January announced separate, longer-range plans to create a comprehensive nuclear-missile defense system, dubbed an “Iron Dome for America.” That project is a radical update of space-based missile interceptors originally called “SDI” or “Brilliant Pebbles” by then-President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. It is almost certain to be more costly and take more time than purely satellite initiatives.

For the shorter term, Space Force brass are enthusiastic about faster alternatives. After feeling muzzled by Biden officials in charge of the military, State Department and White House National Security Council, they gradually are opening up about the importance of offensive options.

For example, Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Pentagon’s Chief of Space Operations, told a conference this month his goal is “employing kinetic and non-kinetic means” to threaten adversaries with everything “from disruption to degradation to destruction.” The anticipated tools, he added, “range from orbital warfare and electromagnetic warfare” to related capabilities that “can be employed for both offensive and defensive purposes.”

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Four days later, he sent an unclassified note to all Space Force personnel emphasizing that offensive weapons are essential for space superiority. Gen. Saltzman also revealed that his staff is working on a binding policy — called Doctrine Document 1 — intended to incorporate the new concepts into a single framework.                    

During his earlier confirmation process, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explained the newfound resolve. In written responses to lawmakers, he unequivocally advocated a Space Force encompassing both offensive and defense capabilities.

Some Trump advisers have gone further to prioritize American control of space.  Adversaries need to see “credible and demonstrated defensive and offensive superiority,” according to an op-ed written last fall by several veteran space experts including Mark Albrecht, a retired industry executive, former chief staffer for the White House Space Council and 2025 Trump transition aide.

White House advisers hope to swivel from such broad strategic language to more specific public disclosures about weaponry they plan to develop. The goal is to replace previous highly classified, one-off contracts with big-ticket procurement programs boasting bipartisan congressional support. Trump’s advisers are convinced that’s the best way to persuade adversaries America is serious about pursuing offense in space.  

Just how different such views are from those of the last administration is illustrated by Biden’s decades-long opposition to orbiting practically any type of weapon. As vice president, years before formation of the Space Force in December 2019, Biden was adamant about that principle.

As a result, generals were barred from using “the word warfighting and the word space on the same page, let alone the same paragraph,” retired Space Force Maj. Gen. Clint Crosier recalled in his official retirement interview with other officers. He spearheaded planning for the new service.  

The rules basically remained the same following the 2020 elections. Starting with a pivotal White House meeting in mid-2021, Space Force leaders were explicitly told President Biden decided nearly all offensive capabilities were off the table. The primary message, according to one industry official briefed on the Oval Office exchange, was that the president didn’t want to be remembered as the first occupant of the White House to weaponize space.

Restrictions were so tight, according to officials who participated in some of the discussions, that military leaders analyzed even obscure, low-priority projects to ensure they didn’t run afoul of White House rules.

Just before the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — as Russian forces sidelined a large U.S. commercial communications satellite serving the region in a brazen cyberattack — the White House stuck with its cautious approach. Uniformed leaders advocated various proposals for new, high-priority offensive capabilities in orbit, but presidential aides again vetoed the concepts, civilian and military experts recall.

Biden’s brain trust also promoted international treaties to restrain militarization of space, a stance rejected by the current White House team and leaders of the U.S. Space Force. 

Besides China, Russia and the U.S., a handful of other countries also can launch increasingly sophisticated satellites. The consensus among experts is that many are pursuing some type of offensive space weapons. France, for one, has acknowledged building flexible, next-generation satellites optimized to attack hostile spacecraft.

Space Force spending has grown faster than any other part of the military budget, but still amounts to only a sliver of Department of Defense spending. Overall, the Space Force’s $30 billion appropriations is less than 4% of DOD’s annual outlays, excluding so-called “black” or classified accounts. But the service’s total spending is bound to grow under revised Trump budgets.

For Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, commander of space forces in the Pacific, however, challenges go beyond spending. Hands-on training for orbital warfare is sorely lacking, he stresses. “It’s like delivering an F-35 and having to keep it in the hangar and not be able to fly it.” At the very least, he and others have argued more virtual drills simulating orbital hostilities are essential.

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