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“Nothing else we’re doing in Space Force is offensive in nature, where we are actually going after an adversary,” said Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Brogan, a unit head in the combat systems branch of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, which is managing development and procurement.

L3Harris, based in Melbourne, Florida, is already developing four Meadowland systems projected for delivery around October 2022. By this December, the Space Force plans to open a competition for 28 more, with funding starting in fiscal 2021 and systems projected for delivery from late 2023 to early 2027.

As of now, Brogan said in an interview, the jamming systems are designed to interfere with communications satellites and not those for data relay or taking photos.

Weaponizing Space

U.S. defense officials long spoke against turning space into a battlefield, much less fielding weapons that could demolish targets and add more hazardous space debris.

The Space Force said in a statement that “China and Russia have weaponized space with the intent to hold American space capabilities at risk,” and the U.S. has the inherent right of self-defense.

Russia’s test launch on Wednesday of an anti-satellite missile is “further proof of Russia’s hypocritical advocacy of outer space arms control proposals designed to restrict the capabilities of the United States while clearly having no intention of halting their counterspace weapons programs,” the Space Force said in a separate statement.