US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said the US military must rapidly adapt to contested environments extending from the seabed to the area of space between Earth and the Moon to gain an advantage in future conflicts.
Speaking at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Maryland on Wednesday, Caine said joint forces must begin preparing to fight, remain resilient and be ready to prevail in areas open to global competition.
An expanding battlespace
According to General Caine, the modern battlespace extends from the seabed to the area of space around the Moon. He said future conflicts would invalidate the old assumptions that logistics would operate without interruption, that safe havens would exist and that supply lines could be protected.
Caine said frontline units could be tracked by autonomous systems, while communications and electronic systems could be jammed across a broad spectrum and monitored in real time. He said the advantage would go to the side that sees, understands, decides and acts first.
Arguing that joint forces must combine high-end and low-end combat capabilities through an agile and optimized structure, Caine said this would create concentrated firepower.
Weapons in orbit
Caine’s remarks came after a statement by Air Force Secretary Troy Meink on Monday. Meink confirmed that the Space Force possesses “space control weapons” operating in orbit to protect joint forces from hostile actions.
The statement marked the first official public acknowledgment of the existence of armed US platforms in orbit. It came as competition with China and Russia in orbit intensified and the “Golden Dome” missile defense network was being developed.
China reacted to the US deployment. Beijing said it opposed turning space into a battlefield and called on Washington to halt its military buildup in orbit.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans placing nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in orbit. However, the treaty does not explicitly prohibit keeping conventional weapons in space.
The military impact of artificial intelligence
Caine described digital autonomy as one of the main factors changing the nature of modern warfare. He said the transformation driven by artificial intelligence and advanced cyber capabilities was progressing faster than that of all other military technologies, adding that the technology was already changing how militaries see, perceive, decide and act.
Describing the impact of artificial intelligence on operations, Caine pointed to an incident near the coast of Oman in June. He said an autonomous vehicle guided by artificial intelligence rescued two US service members after an Apache attack helicopter crashed.
Caine said examples ranging from the Strait of Hormuz to the front lines in Ukraine showed how rapidly technology was changing the nature of war.
