United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. plans to increase spending on offensive and defensive space operations.
“I feel like there’s no way to ignore the fact that the next and the most important domain of warfare will be the space domain,” Hegseth said in March 2025 at the Department of the Air Force Summit — a gathering of senior leaders from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force.
“You’re going to see far more investment from this administration into that domain, both offensively and defensively … because that’s where we can continue to maintain an advantage,” Hegseth said, according to a Department of Defense (DOD) news release.
The defense secretary’s remarks came amid reports that China and Russia are actively testing capabilities for space warfare.
Hegseth said the Air Force and Space Force are the “future of deterrence.” Those services also will likely play roles in developing the Golden Dome for America, a homeland defense system envisioned in an executive order by U.S. President Donald Trump.
U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman, in response to Hegseth’s acknowledgement of space as a critical warfighting domain, told defense website SpaceNews: “He understands exactly what we need to be thinking about.”
That likely includes counterspace technology.
Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael A. Guetlein drew attention to the subject at a March defense industry conference when he said that near peers of the U.S. were practicing satellite “dogfighting,” CNN reported. Guetlein said that “five different objects [were observed] in space, maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control.”
A Space Force spokesperson later confirmed to CNN that Guetlein was referring to activity — the purpose of which was unclear — conducted by China and “observed via commercially available information.”
Counterspace technology includes weapons to disable or destroy satellites, which could disrupt operations ranging from global communications to missile defense. U.S. Space Command Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting told a U.S. Senate Armed Services subcommittee that space activity by U.S. competitors is concerning.
“These novel and unprecedented developments include China’s robust counter-space weapons and space-enabled kill chains, Russia’s reported pursuit of an on-orbit nuclear anti-satellite weapon and wide-ranging ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missile threats,” Gen. Whiting said, according to a March 2025 DOD news release.
Gen. Whiting noted that Beijing’s space presence has expanded rapidly in the past decade. “[China] seeks to rival the United States in nearly all areas of space technology by 2030 and establish itself as the world’s preeminent space power by 2045,” he said.
Hegseth, in his meeting with Air Force and Space Force leaders, pointed out that in wargaming simulations, outcomes often are shaped by space capabilities. “There are strategic things that can be done that change the entire [warfighting] calculus that no one else is paying attention to,” he said, “and I would anticipate that [the space domain] is one of those for us.”