Since Air Force Secretary Troy Meink acknowledged on Sept. 14 that the Space Force “now has on-orbit space control weapons” (see our “U.S. Weapons in Space: It’s About Domination,” Sept. 16), there has been much commentary on whether Washington’s actions have broken the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Russia and China say that the U.S. has not violated the letter of the law, which points to their calls for a more comprehensive agreement to maintain the safety of outer space.

Article IV of the treaty prohibits placing “nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction” in orbit, on celestial bodies, or elsewhere in space, and reserves the Moon and other celestial bodies “exclusively for peaceful purposes,” barring bases, weapons tests and maneuvers there. It says nothing about conventional weapons in Earth orbit. Military satellites for reconnaissance, communications and navigation have been lawful from the start; an orbiting interceptor or a satellite built to rendezvous with another is legal under the treaty.

The gap has been clear for decades. The UN General Assembly’s 1978 special session on disarmament directed the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva to negotiate the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space—PAROS. The conference created an ad hoc committee in 1985; the United States refused it a negotiating mandate, and it lapsed in 1994. In 1990 Washington stated it “has not identified any practical outer space arms control measures that can be dealt with in a multilateral environment.”