TOWARDS THE end of last year a pair of military satellites, one American and the other French, prepared for a delicate orbital minuet. They were about to conduct a so-called rendezvous and proximity operation (RPO)—in which one or more satellites approach another to inspect or manipulate it—near an enemy satellite. They have not said which, but it is not hard to guess. “The French have talked about Russian manoeuvres [near French satellites] over the years,” says General Stephen Whiting, speaking at the headquarters of US Space Command in Colorado Springs. “And so…we demonstrated that we could both manoeuvre satellites near each other and near other countries’ satellites in a way that signalled our ability to operate well together.”

The exercise was so successful, he says, that there are plans to repeat it later this year. It is a milestone: the first time that America has conducted an RPO like this with a country outside the Five Eyes, a spy pact whose members co-operate closely in space, and the first time it was done as a “purpose-built” operation, rather than in response to events. It also embodies America’s new, more muscular approach to space. Space Command was re-established in 2019 during Donald Trump’s first term. In recent years it has focused on building its headquarters and developing staff. Now it is ready. “We now have a combatant command focused on war fighting” in space, says General Whiting.

The impetus for that is two things. The first is that the American armed forces’ reliance on satellites has “compounded exponentially”, says an official, pointing obliquely to America’s strike on Iran in June. “The majority of that operation is space enabled.” The other is what the government sees as a change in the threat. Since 2015 there has been an eight-fold increase in Chinese satellite-launch activity, says the official. The People’s Liberation Army has become much better at operating in space, including conducting electronic warfare in orbit, he says, with China eclipsing Russia. China, Russia and India have tested destructive anti-satellite weapons in 2007, 2021 and 2022 respectively. America also accuses Russia of developing an orbital nuclear weapon that could destroy thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) at once.

A few years ago Space Command was wary of talking about its own offensive capabilities. Now it embraces the idea. “It’s time that we can clearly say that we need space fires, and we need weapon systems. We need orbital interceptors,” said General Whiting in April. “And what do we call these? We call these weapons.” He points to Mr Trump’s Golden Dome plan for a missile-defence shield, which includes space-based interceptors to destroy enemy missiles. In theory the same weapons could also target enemy satellites. “Space to space, space to ground, ground to space” would all play a role in achieving the “lethality that is necessary to achieve…deterrence,” says an official.

America’s allies are also becoming more open about this. In a defence review published this year, Britain said for the first time that it would develop anti-satellite weapons deployed on Earth and in orbit. America leads a small but tight-knit club of spacefaring allies. In Operation Olympic Defender, Space Command works with six countries—Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and New Zealand—to “deter hostile acts in space”. In April the initiative reached “initial operational capability”, with all seven countries signing a joint campaign plan whose details will be finalised this summer.

Space Command is also thinking about the tactical demands of war. While “everything in space is moving”, says General Whiting, America has thought of its satellites as “individual forts” that sit in one place. That is because moving a satellite takes fuel, which can shorten its lifespan. There are three solutions to that, he says. One is for satellites to carry more fuel. Another is to refuel in orbit—something that China demonstrated in June. “That could give them a military advantage,” he says, “...so we need that capability.”

The third approach is to operate so many satellites that each one can be treated as expendable. American officials have been talking about such “proliferated” constellations in LEO—think of SpaceX’s Starlink—for years. Now they are being built. America’s National Reconnaissance Office, which runs classified spy satellites, has launched more than 200 since 2023, with a dozen launches scheduled for this year alone. SpaceX is also rumoured to be the front-runner to build a 450-strong constellation that will eventually relay missile-tracking and other data from sensors to interceptors and weapons.

A fourth method might be added to that list: making the satellites more intelligent. General Whiting says he would love to have AI on board satellites that would allow them to detect “nefarious” objects nearby and to move out of the way without human intervention. In time, suggests Christopher Huynh, a major in the US Space Force, AI-enabled satellites could fly in close formation, meaning they could act as “defender satellites to protect high-value assets in orbit”.

For now, the AI is mostly on the ground. In the past few months, General Whiting says, his staff has built a large language model that has been trained on all of the command’s threat and planning data. Officers can quiz “SpaceBot” on gaps in their knowledge or on how to respond to a fictional or real-world attack in space. “What would once have taken ten people five hours of work”, he suggests, “can be done at machine speed—a space-age achievement.” ■