Putting Missile Interceptors In Space Critical To Defending U.S. Citizens: Space Force Boss

By The War Zone | Created at 2025-03-20 23:56:17 | Updated at 2025-03-21 17:24:30 17 hours ago

New space-based interceptors called for in President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative are all about addressing threats as quickly and as far away from the U.S. homeland as possible, according to U.S. Space Force’s top officer. The Golden Dome (formerly known as Iron Dome) plans come amid broader discussions and concerns about the weaponization of space.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman talked about Golden Dome and other topics during an interview broadcast online as part of Defense One‘s State of Defense 2025: Air Force and Space Force virtual conference today. Golden Dome was first rolled out publicly in an executive order in January and proposes a huge expansion of America’s missile defense architecture.

“It’s not just that we want space-based interceptors, we want them in [the] boost phase,” Saltzman said. “We want them to achieve their effects as far from the homeland. So they’ve got to be fast, they’ve got to be accurate.”

The boost phase is where ballistic missiles, as well as highly maneuverable hypersonic boost-glide vehicles that use ballistic missile-like rocket boosters, are moving slowest and are at their most vulnerable. The bright plume of hot gas also makes them easier to spot and track for an intercept attempt. It is also a short engagement window and any such intercept is likely to occur well within an adversary’s territory. This all presents particular challenges for boost-phase missile defense concepts using air, sea, and/or ground-based assets, as you can read more about here.

The U.S. military has moved to develop and field space-based anti-missile capabilities multiple times in the past only to abandon those plans due to technical complexities and high costs. Space-based weapons were a particularly key element of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), infamously dubbed “Star Wars” by its critics, and which never came close to achieving its ambitious goals. Speaking today, Gen. Saltzman acknowledged those challenges, but also made clear that he felt they were surmountable.

“I think there’s a lot of technical challenges,” he said. “I am so impressed by the innovative spirit of the American space industry. I’m pretty convinced that we will be able to technically solve those challenges.”

“We’ve got a pretty amazing space industrial base and I’m pretty sure they’re going to solve most of those technical problems,” he continued. “So, from that standpoint, I think it’s just about how fast you want to go, you know, how fast can we leverage the technology, and put it in place and test it, [and] get a demo out there so you can see what’s possible.”

Gen. Saltzman also addressed broader concerns about the potentially destabilizing impacts of weaponizing space. Space Force’s top officer countered, as he and other American officials have in the past, by highlighting examples of how this is already happening. China and Russia, in particular, have significant and still-expanding arsenals of space-based and terrestrial anti-satellite capabilities.

“Depends on where you sit, right, you know? But to say that it’s the responsibility for the U.S. government to protect its citizens from emerging threats makes perfect sense to me,” Saltzman said. “And we clearly see a country like the PRC [People’s Republic of China] investing heavily in these kinds of threats, whether it’s hypersonic [weapons], whether it’s threats from space. And so now it’s time for the U.S. government to step up to the responsibilities to protect American citizens from those threats.”

Saltzman’s comments here notably follow Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein’s remarks at the McAleese and Associates annual Defense Programs Conference earlier this week about how China especially is expanding its ability to ‘dogfight’ in space.

“There are five different objects in space maneuvering in and out around each other, in synchronicity and in control. That’s what we call dogfighting in space,” Guetlein said, according to Breaking Defense. “They are practicing tactics, techniques, and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another.”

“Gen. Guetlein referenced Chinese satellite maneuvers observed in space. China conducted a series of proximity operations in 2024 involving three Shiyan-24C experimental satellites and two Chinese experimental space objects, the Shijian-6 05A/B,” a Space Force spokesperson subsequently clarified to that outlet. “These maneuvers were observed in low Earth orbit. These observations are based on commercially available information.”

“Unfortunately, our current adversaries are willing to go against international norms of behavior, go against that gentleman’s agreement, and they’re willing to do it in very unsafe and unprofessional manners,” Guetlein also said, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. “The new norms of behavior in space, unfortunately, within the past three years: jamming, spoofing, dazzling … cyber hacks are happening all around us on a day-to-day basis.”

Space Force officials have publicly highlighted this reality in the past. Gen. Saltzman has also already been a notably outspoken advocate of treating space as just as much of a potential arena for active warfare as the air, sea, and land below. He has also been among those pushing for the U.S. military to acquire new so-called “counter-space” capabilities, which could include additional types of space-based weapon systems, as well as ones within Earth’s atmosphere.

“What I think we’re really recognizing is now space is a contested war-fighting domain, and that’s what’s new, not that the military is considering offensive and defensive operations,” Saltzman said today. “Militaries always conduct offensive and defensive operations to contest the domains to meet military objectives. We just recently had to up our game, if you will, because space has become a warfighting domain.”

“I talk about six categories of counter-space weapons. [There are] three that are ground-based, jammers, directed energy, and then kinetic capabilities, like we’ve seen the PRC use with missiles attacking satellites. And then those same three categories can be done from space, from satellites on orbit, jamming, and directed energy, and kinetic capabilities,” he continued. “So those six categories all have to be invested in, because each one is optimized for different types of targets, whether it’s low earth orbit, whether it’s in geosynchronous orbit, [or] whether it goes out further than that. How much you need in each weapon is kind of what we’re working through in terms of a strategy. But you really have to invest across all those. PRC is showing us that because they’re investing in all those.”

This is fully in line with what Saltzman told TWZ and other outlets about his service’s counter-space priorities at a roundtable on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2025 Warfare Symposium earlier this month.

The only counter-space systems that the U.S. military currently acknowledges possessing are variants of the Counter Communications System (CCS), which are ground-based jammers. However, there have been clear indications over the years that there may be more in the classified realm.

It is worth noting that U.S. officials are broadly in alignment with critics of weaponizing space about the potentially catastrophic downstream impacts of any sustained campaign of attacks on assets in orbit. Gen. Saltzman and others have stressed a need therefore to focus on non-destructive counter-space capabilities to reduce potential risks, but also the need to be prepared for the worst.

“We have to plan for those bad scenarios, and we have to defend ourselves, and hopefully we can be so strong that we deter any kind of attack or any kind of progress into the space domain,” Saltzman said today.

Whether or not Golden Dome’s anti-missile interceptors in orbit or the U.S. military’s other counter-space plans become a reality, the prospect of mass weaponization of space is increasingly on the horizon.

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