Special to CosmicTribune.com, September 24, 2026

Geostrategy-Direct

By Richard Fisher

On Sept. 16, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Daniel Caine told the United States Air and Space Force Association that the U.S. Joint Force should be “prepared to fight” in “cislunar space,” or the region between the Earth and the Moon and around the Moon.

After Air Force Secretary Troy Meink and then Space Force commander Gen. Douglas Schiess statements to the Association on Sept. 15 and 16, revealing and then affirming that the U.S. has weapons in space, Gen. Caine addressed the Association on Sept. 17 about the need to be prepared to fight farther out into cislunar space.

Gen. Caine stated:

“Future conflicts will demand that we operate without the assumptions of uncontested access, secure rare areas or uninterrupted or uncontested sustainment…Our task, my friends, is to adapt right now, so the joint force is prepared to fight, endure and win in global contested environments, from the seabed to cislunar space.”

Gen. Caine added:

“We must continue to ensure that the United States of America can strike anywhere on the globe at the time and place of our choosing, and sustain that force…Our United States Space Force must provide unrivaled space superiority and sustain the associated networks, domain awareness [and] data advantage that the joint force needs to win in space, both now and in the future.”

Following the example of Secretary Meink and Gen. Schiess, Gen. Caine did not elaborate regarding U.S. weapons in space or how the U.S. would “fight” in cislunar space or potentially around or on the Moon.

On one level, the Pentagon’s revelations about U.S. military combat capabilities in space sets a tone for the Sept. 24 second summit this year between Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump — who is putting Xi and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin on notice that U.S. can defend against their aggression in space.

Since China’s Jan. 11, 2007 use of a ground-launched anti-satellite (ASAT) interceptor missile to destroy a weather satellite, China has demonstrated co-orbital space interception, maneuvering and docking “combat” satellites, while on Nov. 15, 2021 — 101 days before invading Ukraine — Russia destroyed a satellite with a ground-launched ASAT interceptor.

Given the “dual-use” nature of the Chinese space program, that is controlled by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with “civilian” programs providing military benefits, it is likely that the PLA has long been preparing for military action in cislunar space and on the Moon.

On Sept. 4, China Daily revealed that China will launch about 30 small cubesats to measure and monitor cislunar space, while the July issue of the Chinese journal Command and Control has an article written by a team led by Northwestern Polytechnical University’s Dang Zhaohui examining combat in Earth orbits and cislunar space.

Dang’s article notes:

“What is at stake in cislunar orbital competition is not any single spacecraft, orbit or route, but the ability to access, control and use space — and to deter adversaries — that they provide.”

Previous Chinese engineering journal articles have explored placing large radar on the Moon to monitor cislunar space, that would help the PLA to target U.S. manned and unmanned spacecraft going to the Moon.

Another article has explored building a small space station at the L-1 Lagrangian Point between the Earth and Moon — cislunar space — that could allow the PLA to monitor and even attack U.S. cislunar space traffic, effectively blockading the Moon.

Perhaps due to the Sept. 24 summit, or perhaps because CCP leaders realize that the U.S. and its allies understand China’s military buildup in Low Earth Orbits and how this could extend to the Moon, China’s initial reactions to the Pentagon’s military space weapons revelations have been somewhat muted.

But this has not been the case for CCP apologist and likely CCP Propaganda Department deputized threat meister Gao Shikai, a Yale Law School graduate and former Chinese Foreign Ministry worker and now public provocateur, who also goes by the name Victor Gao.

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  but China is pressing Moon sovereignty, Pentagon sets focus on cislunar combat zone