US military must prepare to prevail across seabed-to-space battlefield: Top commander

The US military must urgently adapt its forces to operate and prevail in contested environments extending from the ocean floor to the gravitational space between Earth and the Moon, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said Wednesday.

"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," Caine said at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in the US state of Maryland.

Reiterating that "today's modern battlefield operates from the seabed to cislunar space," Caine said future conflicts will dismantle long-held assumptions of uncontested logistics, secure sanctuary areas, or safe resupply routes. He warned that frontline formations must assume they will be "hunted by autonomous systems, jammed across the spectrum and tracked in real time."

"In the future fight, advantage will go to the side who can see first, who can understand first, decide first and act first," he said, urging the joint force to deliver massed lethality using an agile, optimized "high-low mix of combat capabilities."

His warnings follow Monday's disclosure by Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, who confirmed that the Space Force operates on-orbit "space control weapons" capable of defending joint forces against hostile adversary actions. The announcement marked the first formal public acknowledgment of armed US platforms in orbit amid intensifying orbital competition with China and Russia and the development of the "Golden Dome" missile defense network.

China denounced the US deployment, saying that Beijing opposes turning outer space into a "war zone" and urging Washington to halt its orbital military buildup.

While the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits placing nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in orbit, it does not explicitly ban conventional weapons in space

Caine identified digital autonomy as the primary catalyst transforming modern combat dynamics, outpacing all other military technologies.

"No factor is accelerating change as fast as artificial intelligence and advancing cyber capabilities," he said, adding "AI is here now, and it’s already changing the way militaries see, sense, decide and act."

To illustrate how algorithmic integration is redefining military operations, he highlighted an incident in June near the coast of Oman, where an autonomous vessel guided by AI recovered two US soldiers after their Apache attack helicopter went down.

"Taken together, these examples from the Strait of Hormuz to the front lines in Ukraine show how quickly technology is changing the character of war," he said.