US troops must be ready to fight around the moon, Trump's top military adviser warns as space weapons revealed

From the Newshound archive · first published 19 September 2026.

General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called on US armed forces to be ready for conflict across the entire domain from the ocean floor out to cislunar space — the zone around the moon. He issued the warning at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference near Washington, at the same event where America publicly acknowledged for the first time that it has deployed operational weapons in orbit. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink confirmed the US has "on-orbit space control weapons" already active in space. Caine also warned that US forces must now assume their formations will be "hunted by autonomous systems, jammed across the spectrum and tracked in real time."

In 2024, China stood up a dedicated military space branch, extending its warfare reach beyond Earth's orbit.

The Space Force's Combat Forces Command is now organising to fight within both orbital and lunar space, its commander confirmed.

Brigadier General Todd Benson warned that even small nations and subnational groups could access satellite imagery to track US forces — coining the term 'hyper-transparent warfare'.