"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. Dan Caine told airmen, guardians, and industry figures at the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.
Gen. Dan Caine on "seabed to cislunar space"
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs used blunt, sweeping language to expand the Pentagon’s rhetorical reach beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Gen. Dan Caine twice framed the modern battlefield as reaching “from the seabed to cislunar space,” a formulation he did not clarify to specify whether that reach includes operations on the surface of the moon. His keynote followed recent public comments by the Air Force secretary and the Space Force’s chief of space operations revealing the existence of on-orbit space-control weapons.
Legal ambiguity: cislunar definitions and the Outer Space Treaty
U.S. law itself is not definitive about whether cislunar space includes the lunar surface. The phrase is defined in one U.S. source as “the region of space from the Earth out to and including the region around the surface of the moon.” At least one Harvard Law Journal article interprets that clause to mean the moon’s surface is included, and the White House’s National Cislunar Science and Technology Action Plan said in late 2024 that it includes the lunar surface. By contrast, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 2021 “Primer on Cislunar Space” appears to treat space and the moon’s surface as different domains.
Those jurisdictional nuances sit atop a longstanding treaty obligation: the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which the U.S. signed, forbids “the establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies,” while allowing the use of military personnel for peaceful purposes. Legal scholars and military lawyers say that treaty language does not provide clear answers about how weapons would be used in cislunar or lunar contexts.
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See what we buildOperational moves: squadrons, sensors, and on-orbit weapons
Space Force leaders are already shifting force structure and capability emphasis. Lt. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, head of Combat Forces Command, told reporters that the 18th and 19th Space Defense Squadrons are “now both sharing the cislunar mission among each other.” He framed the change as an extension of the area the force must watch: “Our adversaries, our potential adversaries, such as the PRC, are actively pursuing activities in the cislunar parts of space. So that's sort of the expansion, if you will, of I would say the end zone, if you will, in the football game.”
Senior Space Force officials have publicly emphasized adding sensors and other capabilities to observe adversary movements in the region. The recent public revelation by Air Force Secretary Troy Meink and Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Douglas Schiess that the U.S. has on-orbit space-control weapons prompted questions about how those systems would operate. Experts quoted in reporting have speculated the systems are likely non-kinetic—jammers or electronic-warfare tools—but the Space Force has been cautious in explaining operational details.
When asked whether U.S. policy limits the use of kinetic space weapons—destructive capabilities that would create debris—Gagnon deferred to policy offices and offered a stark reminder of wartime realities: “So we have capabilities in the military because we are preparing to defend the nation. The reason we have capabilities is to help create deterrence,” he said. “When you go to war, you break things.”
Congressional action: the NDAA 2027 space-law provision
Congress has begun to push the Defense Department to catch up on legal capacity. The Senate Armed Services Committee inserted a provision in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that tasks the Pentagon with assessing its “space law requirements” to face rising threats and to examine “options for establishing a dedicated legal organization within the Air Force, Space Force, or Space Command.” The amendment explicitly states senators are “concerned that current legal, policy, and institutional structures within the Department of Defense may not have kept pace with the complexity of space operations.”
What this means for the Space Force, DoD lawyers, the Senate, and the PRC
- Space Force: The service is reallocating unit responsibilities—placing the 18th and 19th Space Defense Squadrons on a shared cislunar mission—and is emphasizing additional sensors and other awareness capabilities to monitor activities between Earth and the moon.
- DoD legal and policy offices: Officials fielded immediate questions about weapon employment and deferred details to policy shops; the NDAA 2027 provision will require a formal assessment of space-law needs and options for a dedicated legal organization within military space structures.
- The Senate: Lawmakers have signaled explicit concern that legal and institutional frameworks lag operations, and have codified that concern into a required DoD assessment in the 2027 NDAA.
- The PRC (as described in reporting): Experts pointed to Chinese activity—a relay satellite in cislunar space and robotic missions on the far side of the moon—as a driver for U.S. urgency and for calls to close a U.S. “coverage gap” in cislunar awareness.
For now, the record shows a military accelerating its posture into cislunar space, legal scholars noting real ambiguity about what that posture could lawfully permit, and lawmakers ordering a formal review of the Defense Department’s legal capacity. As one academic put it bluntly: “Ultimately, I think the first space conflict might be the time when most of these rules get written.”
