NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.–The United States has orbital space weapons, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said on Monday.
“What’s becoming even more important as we move forward is sensing and command and control–everything we’re talking about doing from long-range fires and control of our forces, the space capability–maintaining and being able to count on those space capabilities is important,” Meink told the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual conference here. “And, as everybody knows, there have been many developing capabilities to take those away from us.” Meink declined to go into specifics on those space weapons.
The assertion that the U.S. has space weapons marks a significant departure, as U.S. officials have always left a question mark when asked about the existence of such weapons in a nod to what those officials saw as a bolstering of deterrence.
In Monday’s address, Meink also said that launches of the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indication (SB-AMTI) constellation would begin this month.
Before going public in June, SpaceX [SPCX] received a nearly $4.2 billion contract for the initial fielding of SB-AMTI (Defense Daily, May 29). In April, the Space Force said it had awarded nine firms, including SpaceX, small contracts for SB-AMTI development.
Last month, Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) said it had awarded $615 million in Other Transaction Authority contracts for SB-AMTI to Rocket Lab [RKLB], STR LLC, and a company unnamed by SSC for “operational security” reasons, the command said on Tuesday (Defense Daily, Aug. 4).
For the air superiority and surveillance/ground attack portions of the Department of the Air Force mission, the Air Force has said it continues to pursue a “high-low” mix.
The Air Force has signaled that it increasingly believes that significantly less costly munitions and future, less costly platforms like Collaborative Combat Aircraft and Massed Modular Aircraft will play a key part in winning the day against high-tech potential adversaries, rather than just costly, “exquisite” platforms, like the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 fighter and the future F-47 fighter by Boeing [BA] and the Northrop Grumman [NOC] B-21 Raider stealth bomber.
Meink said on Monday that the Air Force planned to field 500 CCAs by 2032, 500 MMAs by 2032 after an initial force of 100 MMAs by 2029, and “tens of thousands” of the Family of Affordable Mass Missiles by 2032.
In June, the Air Force chose the FQ-42A Dark Merlin by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) and the FQ-44A Fury by Anduril Industries. to enter engineering and manufacturing development for Increment 1 of CCA (Defense Daily, June 17).
On Monday, Meink said the Air Force name for the FQ-42A is Vengeance, while the FQ-44A will retain the Fury moniker.
