Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command (SPACECOM), wants weapons in space. “We’re a combatant command and we fight to win wars. To win, we need credible, acknowledged, kinetic and non-kinetic fires. They are a key component of how we establish space superiority and restore credible deterrence,” he told the annual Army Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, yesterday, reported Breaking Defense.
SPACECOM’s two top priorities for fiscal years 2029-2033 are “integrated space fires” and capabilities to counter large constellations of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) in order to establish space superiority, Whiting said. He neither gave examples of the weapons that the command is seeking, nor did he define the term “space fires,” though it likely means weapons designed to attack satellites in orbit, and/or to attack ground targets from space.
