For decades, United States officials spoke about space in careful, almost antiseptic language. Satellites were “assets.” Orbit was a “domain.” Even as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Russia tested anti-satellite weapons, U.S. leaders preferred phrases like “space control” and “space superiority,” terms that suggested stewardship rather than conflict.
That rhetorical restraint is disappearing. At the Space Foundation’s 40th annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in April 2025, Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM), dispensed with euphemisms. The U.S., he said, needs “orbital interceptors” if it hopes to deter conflict — and, if necessary, win one.
“And what do we call these?” Whiting asked during his address. “We call these weapons, and we need them to deter a space conflict and to be successful if we end up in such a fight.”
It was a striking moment: A senior combatant commander openly embraced the language of space warfare. But it was less provocation than acknowledgment. The conflict above Earth is no longer theoretical. It’s unfolding daily — through jamming, spoofing, cyber intrusions, laser dazzling, orbital maneuvers and, in some cases, destructive anti-satellite tests that scatter debris across the heavens.
A layered arsenal on orbit
Much of the shift in U.S. strategy has been driven by the rapid expansion of Chinese and Russian counterspace capabilities. In written testimony submitted ahead of his April 3, 2025, appearance before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Space Force Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, warned that Beijing is building a layered arsenal designed to hold U.S. space systems at risk.
Counterspace weapons, Saltzman explained, fall into six categories: ground-based jammers, kinetic weapons and directed energy weapons — and space-based versions of all three. The CCP is investing in each.
Kinetic weapons include direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles that physically collide with satellites, destroying them in clouds of high-speed orbital debris. Directed energy systems use concentrated beams — often lasers — to disrupt, degrade or damage sensors. Electronic warfare systems jam radio frequency links, interfering with communications, GPS navigation and radar.
“Aside from missiles, the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] has fielded multiple ground-based laser weapons able to disrupt, degrade, or damage satellite sensors,” Saltzman said in his testimony. “By the mid-to-late 2020s, we expect them to deploy systems high enough in power that they can physically damage satellite structures.”
He also warned lawmakers about Beijing’s growing surveillance and targeting network on orbit, describing what he called a kill web of satellites that find, track and target forces on Earth.
“That’s a new mission set and really rounds out what we say it means to have space superiority, to use space control: Protect ours, but also deny theirs, and that’s what we’re trying to invest more in,” Saltzman told the commission.
The implications are profound. Space superiority is no longer a passive shield. It’s an active contest — one that extends from the ground to geosynchronous orbit.
The war you can’t see
If missile strikes represent the most dramatic expression of counterspace conflict, electronic warfare is its most common — and most persistent — form.
According to the Secure World Foundation’s 2025 “Global Counterspace Capabilities” report, covering developments from February 2024 to February 2025, “only non-destructive capabilities are actively being used against satellites in current military operations.” Victoria Samson, one of the report’s primary authors, put it more bluntly in an interview with Apogee: “Everyone is jamming.”
“You have to understand, GPS was built for a different time,” she said. “It was built for a time when the assumption was you didn’t really have to worry about the signal being interfered with. And GPS satellites are really far out. It’s a weak signal by the time it gets to the ground,” making it susceptible to ground-based jamming.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has provided a real-time laboratory. Moscow has unleashed a prolonged campaign of electronic jamming and spoofing — collectively, electronic warfare (EW) — targeting satellite GPS signals, military aircraft, guided weapons and drones. The cornerstone of its program, the truck-mounted R-330Zh Zhitel, is widely deployed and active, jamming GPS, satellite communications and cellular networks. It’s used extensively to disrupt Ukrainian drone operations and GPS-guided munitions.
The widespread use of jamming in Ukraine has not been confined to the battlefield. On October 31, 2025, Russian EW disrupted the navigational system of a plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The aircraft landed safely, but European leaders issued sharp protests over what might have become a catastrophe.
The problem has even reached space. John Janeski of the Aerospace Corp. told Air & Space Forces Magazine at a July 2025 industry event that jamming “is bleeding up into the space environment and impacting satellites.”
“We have images showing [GPS reception details] for all the CubeSats that the Aerospace Corp. flies in low-Earth orbit, and there’s a giant hole above the Ukraine region,” he said.
The pattern has repeated elsewhere, including in Iran, where for months the government orchestrated a sustained internet blackout, including on fixed wireless, mobile broadband and public Wi-Fi. In January 2026, amid a bloody crackdown on protesters, some outages were linked directly to jamming. Filter Watch, an Iranian monitoring group, blamed the government, noting the disruptions started on January 8 to coincide with the protests, then intensified. “Around 4 a.m. on January 9, reports surfaced of massive, intentional jamming across all communication platforms,” the group wrote.
One target was the internet satellite constellation Starlink. “Efforts to jam GPS signals aimed at disrupting Starlink have been observed,” one posting said. “The assault was so intense that charts indicated 30% packet loss on Starlink connections. Users described this interference as ‘living inside a microwave.’”
Other watchdog groups reported packet losses as high as 80% in some areas. Packets are units of data transmitted across the internet.
Nariman Gharib, an Iranian opposition activist and independent cyber-espionage investigator based in the United Kingdom, told Reuters in January 2026 that he analyzed data from a Starlink terminal inside Iran and observed spoofing — fake signals designed to confuse receivers. “You might be able to send text messages, but forget about video calls,” he said.
Spoofing does not destroy a satellite. It does something subtler: It makes it lie. GPS receivers can be tricked into calculating the wrong location. Drones can be misdirected. Internet traffic can be slowed to a crawl. The effects are reversible — but in combat, reversibility may matter less than timing.
From Ukraine to Epic Fury
Electronic warfare is now more than an auxiliary tool. Increasingly, it’s the opening move. That reality was evident during Operation Epic Fury. In the early morning darkness of February 28, 2026 — as U.S. and Israeli forces prepared a massive assault against Iranian targets — EW units from USSPACECOM and U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) were laying the groundwork, attacking Iranian military communications.
“The first movers were USCYBERCOM and USSPACECOM, layering nonkinetic effects, disrupting and degrading and blinding Iran’s ability to see, communicate and respond,” Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters. “USCYBERCOM and SPACECOM continuously layered effects to disrupt, disorient and confuse the enemy.”
For militaries, jamming offers distinct advantages. It can be turned on and off. It’s difficult to attribute with certainty. It creates no space debris. And, as Saltzman emphasized in his 2025 testimony, debris is not a trivial matter.
“Destroying something on orbit, as we’ve seen with the Chinese in 2007 and the Russians in 2021, the debris that’s generated by a destructive force on orbit can be catastrophic for all of the users of the space domain,” Saltzman told the commission. “And so, I feel the last resort — and something that we don’t want to create — this long-lasting, hazardous debris field that can start to make the domain far less sustainable.”
The preference for reversible, nonkinetic effects reflects both strategic caution and practical necessity.
Lasers and the next threshold
Beyond jammers and spoofers lies a more technologically complex frontier: directed energy weapons, or lasers. As Saltzman testified, the CCP has fielded multiple ground-based laser systems capable of disrupting or damaging satellite sensors. In 2023, Asian and Western media reported that CCP researchers were developing lasers with improved heat dissipation for greater accuracy over repeated use.
Additionally, France has explored co-orbital defensive concepts linked to onboard lasers that could “neutralize unfriendly satellites without creating any debris,” according to the Secure World Foundation’s 2025 report.
Lasers blur the line between interference and destruction. They can dazzle optical sensors temporarily. With sufficient power and duration, they can permanently damage components. They travel at the speed of light. And unlike missiles, they leave no debris.
While it hasn’t uncovered public evidence that the U.S. possesses space-based directed energy weapons, the foundation, a Colorado-based think tank, acknowledged in its report that over the past several decades, “the United States has conducted significant research and development on the use of ground-based high-energy lasers for counterspace and other purposes. We assess that there are no technological roadblocks to the United States operationalizing them for counterspace applications.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to advance its EW capabilities. The Space Force is fielding new ground-based jammers, including the Meadowlands and the Remote Modular Terminal, to mitigate threats posed by Chinese and Russian surveillance satellites. Additionally, Bounty Hunter, a device introduced in 2019, can detect adversarial electronic warfare signals. The Space Force took delivery of the first production-based Meadowlands device in late 2025 and expects to acquire up to 32 units by 2028.
U.S. military aircraft have used jamming for more than 80 years, starting in World War II when bomber crews tossed out bales of aluminum strips code-named window and later known as chaff to confuse German radar, a 1989 Air & Space Forces Magazine article said. Dedicated electronic attack aircraft — designed to disrupt enemy radars and communications — have been deployed since the 1960s. Today’s premier jammer, the Boeing EA-18G Growler, can detect, identify and jam enemy radar and communications across a wide spectrum. Its CCP counterpart, the J-16D electronic warfare aircraft, has been actively deployed by the PLA Air Force since late 2020.
“Jamming is a very usable counterspace capability because it doesn’t destroy the target you’re dealing with, so it’s not escalatory,” Samson told Apogee. “It’s pretty effective, and you can turn it off at any point.”
The new normal on orbit
Whiting’s reference to “orbital interceptors” reflects a broader shift in U.S. military thinking: Deterrence in space now rests on demonstrating both defensive and offensive capabilities. Senior leaders have increasingly adopted direct language about weapons on orbit, even as they stress that conflict in space is not a foregone conclusion. War in space, Whiting said at the 2025 Space Symposium, “is not inevitable.”
He emphasized that security measures are intended to preserve long-term access and stability on orbit. “But this incredible future won’t happen on its own,” Whiting said. “It’s one we must safeguard, shape and defend together to not only protect our interests in space but also to protect that future.”
Whiting said the transformation of space into a warfighting domain has occurred at “jaw-dropping speed.” While destructive anti-satellite missile tests have drawn international attention, defense leaders say the more significant trend is the steady use of nonkinetic tools: jamming, spoofing, cyber operations, laser dazzling and close-proximity orbital maneuvers.
Much of this activity produces no visible debris or public spectacle. Yet modern military operations depend heavily on space-based communications, navigation, targeting, weather data and intelligence. Civilian infrastructure also is tightly linked to satellite services.
“The space domain plays an increasingly vital role in making the modern American way of life possible,” Saltzman told commissioners. “China’s pursuit of its ambitions in the domain could present a powerful destabilizing force to our economy and our national security. Today, more than half of the 16 sectors of critical national infrastructure depend on satellites. A third of our crops are grown using weather data from space.
“Internet and cellular service rely on satellites for optimization and resiliency. Modern transportation and logistics would be impossible without the Global Positioning System (GPS), and the timing signal it provides serves as the basis for digital finance and e-commerce transactions,” Saltzman told the commission. “Simply put, space matters more and more every single day, and the vast majority of our capability is built, sustained and operated by the U.S. Space Force.”