The head of the U.S. Space Force says his job is to “think about worst-case scenarios” when it comes to potential threats in space from America’s adversaries, whether they’re Russian “nesting doll” satellites or Chinese “grappling arm” tactics that could suddenly become weaponized.
“We used to say there are emerging threats. I don’t say that anymore. There are threats in orbit,” Chief of Space Force Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said in an exclusive video interview with Threat Status at The Washington Times.
From directed energy or lasers, to radio frequency jammers and such straight-up kinetic capabilities as missiles, Gen. Saltzman said, there are “U.S. adversaries that are investing in all those categories of weapons. … And we are seeing operational deployments of a great many of those categories of weapons today.”
His comments in the video interview published Thursday come amid a heightened Trump administration focus on the futuristic frontier, as evidenced by an executive order President Trump issued last month under the title “Ensuring America’s Space Superiority.”
The order carries significant weight for the Space Force, which was founded at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term in 2019 as the newest of the U.S. military’s service branches.
“Clearly the administration and the president understand how critical space is and how important it is that we secure the advantages that we enjoy from space capabilities,” Gen. Saltzman told The Times, adding that while space has been important to the U.S. military for many decades, the more pressing issue today is how vital it has become to the present American way of life.
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“That might be the thing that’s changed the most in at least the last 10 or 15 years,” he said. “Americans’ daily lives are affected by space capabilities in ways they don’t see — in ways they don’t even really recognize.”
“People know that, ’My phone is connected to a map, and the map is guided by GPS,’ and they kind of generally appreciate that,” Gen. Saltzman said. “But the synchronization of signals, the timing synchronization provided by space capabilities, really enables the internet. It controls all financial transactions. It really is a force multiplier … for all of the things that we’ve come to expect. Amazon deliveries … e-banking, these are things that are enabled by space capabilities.”
It has become “so critical,” he added, “that our adversaries pay attention.”
Few in the U.S. national security community dispute that Washington is now in the throes of a 21st-century commercial and military space race with China and Russia.
China, specifically, has accelerated its space-based capabilities to a level almost unimaginable just a few years ago.
Beijing is now fielding remote-sensing satellites, cutting-edge refueling assets, on-edge computing capabilities to process data in space and experimental spacecraft — some with as-of-yet unexplained missions — in a bid to challenge and potentially supplant U.S. dominance in space.
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Among the biggest challenges facing the U.S. Space Force thus far has been the blurring by U.S. adversaries of lines between commercial and military assets in space.
In 2021, for instance, China launched an SJ-21 satellite that employs a large robotic grappling arm that Beijing claims is intended to clear space debris. Within a year of the launch, the SJ-21 had grabbed onto a defunct Chinese satellite and moved into what is known as “graveyard” orbit.
Gen. Saltzman called the development “interesting.”
“Could a grappling arm be used for non-weapons purposes? Absolutely. Our space shuttle had a grappling arm. But what we saw [was] them use the grappling arm to grab a satellite and pull it out of its operational orbit,” he told The Times. “Could that be used for servicing satellites? Absolutely. Could that be used as a weapon? Absolutely. So now, we have to think about that.”
“My job is to think about worst-case scenarios,” he said. “My job is to make sure that we don’t get caught off guard if something is used as a weapon system.”
Russia, meanwhile, has in recent years launched so-called Matryoshka or “nesting doll” satellites, which, once in orbit, can launch smaller sub-satellites that track other space assets and can act like anti-satellite weapons.
“Think about a satellite that deploys another satellite that maybe deploys something that’s intended to be more like a bullet trying to strike a satellite,” said Gen. Saltzman. “So you have these nested capabilities that we would have to keep track of. That’s the key piece there.”
China’s space launch capabilities are expanding, giving Beijing greater ability to put a wide range of new satellites in orbit beyond the more than 1,300 it already has there. “It is just amazing how quickly the Chinese and other adversaries are advancing,” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told an audience last month at the Spacepower 2025 conference, sponsored by the Space Force Association.
“Four or five years ago, we had been dominating in launch, and you can see them making massive improvements, really trying to catch up,” Mr. Meink said.
The number of U.S. space launches is also expanding dramatically.
Gen. Saltzman told The Times that “in very recent years, nine to 10 launches from one of our launch bases were … a full year of work, and now we’re 10 times that.”
More than 100 launches occurred in 2025 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, with several dozen more taking off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, he said. “This is a 700% to 800% increase in launch tempo.”
The rapid increase in tempo is prompting concern in some national security circles, particularly as private U.S. companies such as SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin compete for access to launch pads. Debate is at times heated over the extent to which commercial rocket and satellite launches should or shouldn’t be given priority over more national security-focused launches.
Asked whether the United States needs to expand the number of designated sites for launches, Gen. Saltzman responded: “It’s more of a question of when will we need new launch sites?”
It’s one of many questions facing the U.S. Space Force, the operations of which remain primarily centered around ground-based command and control of U.S. space assets.
In 2014, Space Force Guardian Col. Nick Hague became the first Space Force officer to visit the International Space Station in orbit, raising the prospect that more guardians may soon be sent into orbit for training and potentially combat missions.
Gen. Saltzman told The Times that the Space Force has “a tight relationship with NASA, and right now, NASA has the primary responsibility in terms of human spaceflight.”
“Do [I] need astronauts in space? Guardian astronauts in space to do our current missions? Right now, the answer is I don’t,” he said. “Satellites alone are sufficient. But we are early in the days of maturing the domain. With regards to national security and warfighting, as those missions change, as we progress out into regimes beyond geosynchronous orbit, out to cislunar and beyond, there may very well be a need to actually have military presence in terms of personnel on orbit.
“The Space Force will have a role in protecting anything that’s a vital national interest in terms of in, from and through space,” Gen. Saltzman said. “So to the degree that there are assets on orbit that are commercial, civil or military, or allies and partners, quite frankly, that are vital assets to the United States for the things that we want to do, then it’s my job to protect them.”
• Ben Wolfgang contributed to this article.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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