ארה"ב אישרה כי יש לה מערכות נשק בחלל, האם הצעד בא בתגובה לאיומים מצד המשטר הסיני והמשטר האיראני? - פרשנות

The rivalry between the U.S. and China is extending into space, with satellites and space weapons the next frontier of military might. The U.S. acknowledged this week that the Pentagon has weapons in Earth's orbit, a landmark moment that has drawn attention from China and Russia. To discuss, I spoke on Tiffany Meyer Tonight yesterday with Rebecca Grant, Vice President at the Lexington Institute. The United States now publicly acknowledging it has weapons in orbit. Air Force Secretary Troy Mink, making the disclosure Monday at a space conference in Maryland. Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist. This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action. The comments, the first public Pentagon acknowledgement, the United States has deployed these weapons in orbit, but the Pentagon not saying what kind of weapons they are, how many are deployed or when they were put into orbit. The disclosure coming amid rising U.S. concerns about Russia and Chinese counter space capabilities. A U.S. Space Command official calling the acknowledgement a landmark moment. Joining us now is National Security Analyst Rebecca Grant, Vice President of the Lexington Institute. Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us. Always great to have you. First, hypothetically, what kinds of weapons might we have at this point in space versus what our adversaries may have? Well, this is a really big moment and such an interesting announcement. You know, Dr. Mink, who is the secretary of the Air Force, worked in space for many, many decades. He's also a former Air Force pilot. So believe me, every word was deliberate. Now, the Air Force does not want to discuss what kind of weapons it has. And I think that's fine. But I just give you kind of the broad possibilities. You can counter other satellites with lasers. You can do it with electromagnetic jamming. You can do it with cyber attack. And you can also do it with with physical attack because satellites are very, very delicate. So those are some of the possibilities of why this is happening is because of space. The Space Force has told us we know that Russia is working, thinking about developing a nuclear on orbit weapon. That's not what we're doing. And also, China has tested a fractional orbital bombardment system and also has some some other capabilities as well. So this is the U.S. putting down a marker, number one, to deter any conflict in space. And on that point, there have been reports that Iran has used satellite imagery provided by Chinese entities ahead of a July attack that killed three American troops in Jordan. Could these space weapons be used to counter those kinds of threats? Well, again, probably Iran. We don't know for sure where they got the satellite imagery, but there is a lot of commercial satellite imagery that is available. And shame on whoever sold it to them. But that's a little bit of a different category because there you have a satellite taking a picture of a facility on the ground and it being passed to Iran, who then used it for targeting, which is terrible. But what we're thinking about here with the space weapons is not so much taking out commercial satellites as defending our ability to do space control. And you know, so much of our economy is based on the timing signals that come from space. And then our U.S. military is very reliant on space for communications and for sensing as well. So this is about space control, making sure that we are able to use our U.S. space assets for the joint force and then, frankly, in our everyday lives. And when it comes to the threats posed by China and Russia in space, a former senior space official said this during a Senate hearing last summer. Let's take a listen. What about our adversaries, China, Russia? My biggest concern is that the the kill web that we call it, that the PRC has put in place allows them to track and target at great range the rest of the joint force and all the other domains. They've put a very capable ISR web together on orbit. I have to protect the joint force from space and able to attack worldwide. What do we do? We characterize that defense by name, space, space superiority. And Rebecca, General Saltzman mentioned China's kill web in that clip. Break that down for us. What is it and how concerned should we be about it? Well, it's a big concern because this is a number of Chinese satellites that have been launched. Most of them have been fairly recent years and put together. China is trying to have the ability to track the movement of our military forces on the surface of the Earth. So whether that's Navy ships, air bases, et cetera. Now, look, there are a lot of tactics that our Navy and our Air Force has to evade that. But another piece here is to be sure that if it came to a conflict, U.S. forces could disrupt and break down and break up China's satellite based kill web. It's not complete yet, but it's getting to be very, very good. And again, you do that either non-kinetically with electromagnetic radiation or, you know, maybe you do it by knocking out a satellite or two. So this is the United States very deliberately saying, look, we have space superiority and we're going to keep it. And let me tell you, whatever is on orbit that they're talking about, spend there for a little while is my guess. And lastly, the timing of the Pentagon's announcement is also interesting. We know Xi Jinping's visit to Washington is expected to take place in less than 10 days. What do you make of the Pentagon announcing these space weapons, essentially targeting China in its messaging just ahead of that summit? Yes, I mean, definitely to to get that message to Xi Jinping, but also a bit of a rebuke for probably the assistance that we've seen to Iran to try to target our U.S. forces. And then also, look, our Space Force has been in existence six years. It needs to double in size. And that money is requested in the 2027 budget. We need more ground stations. We need more guardians. Those are the people in the Space Force. We need to continue with important programs like Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator. And there's a lot of the Golden Dome that rests in space to do missile defense. So we really need a bigger Space Force. And Congress will be taking up that that request with this budget cycle.