Top USAF general tells troops to begin preparation for battles on the Moon, ‘adapt right now’

American troops may soon be fighting pitched battles on the moon. That’s the opinion of Air Force General. Dan Caine, who, in a speech yesterday at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Maryland, urged service members and defense leaders to take the prospect of space warfare seriously.

As per Stars and Stripes, General Caine explained that troops, “must adapt right now, so the joint force is prepared to fight, endure, and win in global contested environments, from the seabed to cislunar space.”

In defence terms, the US government defines “cislunar space” as “the volume of space beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit that is mainly under the gravitational influence of the Earth and/or the Moon” and underlines that this includes “the lunar surface.”

“Operate without the assumptions of uncontested access”

Caine underlines that “future conflicts” may well take US troops to novel places where existing battle tactics won’t apply, saying: “future conflicts will demand that we operate without the assumptions of uncontested access, secure rear areas, or uninterrupted or uncontested sustainment.”

This speech came against the backdrop of Air Force Secretary Troy Meink confirming that the United States has deployed unknown weapons in space for the first time, teasing the use of “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.” It is unclear precisely what these weapons are or what their targets might be, but it seems they are up there and ready to go.

So, who will America’s finest be battling against on the moon? Well, the Space Force’s “fact sheet” names China and Russia as the most likely lunar adversaries. They claim Russia sees space “a warfighting domain and believes space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts,” and that China “expects space to play an important role in future conflicts by enabling long-range precision strikes and denying other militaries the use of space-based information.”

It’s uncertain what Caine means when he says that US forces must “adapt right now” to the prospect of lunar battles. As with NASA’s astronaut training, the military could attempt to simulate lunar combat in desert areas or potentially use VR training to mimic Moon combat.

The next human landing on the lunar surface will be NASA’s Artemis IV mission, currently scheduled for early 2028. As with all NASA’s missions, the focus will be on science rather than warfare, though if the military-industrial complex really is eyeing the Moon as a key tactical location it must control, expect whatever findings to be pored over carefully by Space Force troops.