Air & Space Forces Magazine
As CSO, Saltzman is responsible for recruiting, training, and equipping Guardians to be effective space warfare operators.
Offensive weapons to hold adversaries’ space systems at risk are top priorities for both the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command, leaders made clear at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September.
Yet details on what kinds of weapons they want remain scarce, and the implications of a space war still gave some officials pause when discussing counterspace and space dominance—reflecting a persistent tension between deterrence, classification, and deep-rooted fears of weaponizing space.
For years, talk of developing, let alone using, offensive weapons in space was taboo in U.S. military circles. Although the U.S. was the first to demonstrate destructive power in space, official policy made clear such capabilities were for defensive purposes only, given the long-lasting effects of debris in orbit and the U.S. commitment to keeping space a peaceful domain. But as China and Russia have tested anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons and built up rival space capabilities designed to counter U.S. advantages in the heavens, those basic premises have changed.
The creation of the Space Force in 2019 cracked the door open for wider discussions about China’s and Russia’s militarization of space, and since his appointment as Chief of Space Operations in 2023, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman has shifted the conversation about establishing the structures and processes of a Space Force to the operational employment of space as a competitive, contested domain in which the United States must deter rivals from threatening U.S. advantages in space.
Saltzman made “responsible counterspace campaigning” part of his “Theory of Competitive Endurance” and said in September that his fiscal 2026 budget request will put dollars behind that theory.
“The priorities that we have submitted—still early in the deliberation process—are counterspace capabilities and the space domain awareness that underpins it,” Saltzman said. “We have to understand what’s going on in the domain to effectively employ counterspace capability.”