Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on September 16, 2026, that U.S. forces must prepare to operate in contested environments extending to cislunar space. Speaking at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, he described the modern battlefield as spanning “from the seabed to cislunar space,” the region between Earth and the moon.
Caine used the phrase twice while arguing that the military can no longer assume uncontested access to the areas and systems on which it depends. Future conflicts could also disrupt the networks and logistics needed to sustain operations, he said. He called on the joint force to adapt now to those conditions.
The chairman said the U.S. Space Force must provide space superiority as well as the networks, awareness of activity in space and data needed by forces on Earth. He gave no details of a cislunar military mission, identified no adversary in that part of his address and did not announce weapons or deployments near the moon.
Earthset over the moon, captured by the astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission on April 6, 2026. (Image credit: NASA)
The remarks place a growing area of lunar activity within the military’s planning horizon. As government and commercial spacecraft travel farther from Earth, operators will need to track them and maintain communications and navigation across distances far beyond those of most military satellites. Caine’s speech did not specify what capabilities the United States intends to field for that purpose.
His comments followed a separate disclosure at the conference. On September 15, Gen. Douglas Schiess, chief of space operations, said Space Force personnel operate weapons in Earth orbit that can defend U.S. forces against space-enabled attacks. Schiess did not identify the systems or their capabilities. That statement concerned on-orbit weapons; it did not establish that the United States has deployed weapons in cislunar space.
Caine’s address therefore marked a statement about the geographic scope of future military planning, while leaving the Space Force’s specific requirements and plans for operations near the moon undefined.
