A Falcon 9 carried the classified USSF-385 mission into orbit from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base, extending a rapid series of national-security launches less than two weeks after the Pentagon publicly acknowledged that the United States has deployed space-control weapons in orbit.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. — SpaceX launched another classified U.S. Space Force mission from California on Saturday, sending an undisclosed payload into orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket as cooperation between the company and the military continues to expand in the increasingly contested space domain.
The Falcon 9 carrying USSF-385 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7 a.m. Pacific time Sept. 26, according to Space.com. SpaceX’s official mission information confirms the 7 a.m. launch time and identifies USSF-385 as a Space Force mission.
Precisely what the rocket carried remains secret.
The Space Force has not publicly identified the mission’s payloads, their functions or their final orbital destinations, and SpaceX ended its webcast shortly after the reusable first stage landed rather than showing deployment of the classified spacecraft.
KTLA reported that the mission’s payloads, activities and exact destination were all classified and that SpaceX terminated its public broadcast before deployment, a practice the company commonly follows on sensitive national-security missions.
The Falcon 9’s reusable first stage, designated B1100, separated from the upper stage and returned to Earth approximately eight and a half minutes after liftoff, landing successfully on SpaceX’s Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Pacific Ocean.
Saturday marked the booster’s 10th launch and landing. Its previous missions included one National Reconnaissance Office flight and eight Starlink missions.
SpaceX had warned before liftoff that residents in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties could hear one or more sonic booms depending on atmospheric and weather conditions as the rocket departed California’s Central Coast.
USSF-385 was SpaceX’s third Space Force flight in a span of 16 days, following the classified USSF-153 and USSF-259 missions launched from Vandenberg earlier in September.
The rapid sequence illustrates the growing role of reusable commercial launch systems in placing U.S. national-security spacecraft into orbit.
SpaceX had completed 108 Falcon 9 missions in 2026 by the time USSF-385 launched, according to Space.com, with roughly three-quarters devoted to the company’s Starlink broadband constellation.
Although the government has disclosed almost nothing about USSF-385, outside launch analysts have noted similarities between its trajectory and previous classified deployments believed to involve spacecraft using SpaceX’s Starshield architecture.
Spaceflight Now reported before Saturday’s launch that USSF-385 was thought to be the third flight in a particular sequence of missions deploying satellites derived from the Starshield platform, SpaceX’s government-oriented adaptation of technologies developed for Starlink.
That interpretation has not been confirmed by the Space Force.
The same outlet reported that two earlier missions in the suspected series, USSF-366 on Aug. 15 and USSF-153 on Sept. 10, were followed by the cataloging of 23 objects in orbit after each launch. A separate classified mission, USSF-259, appeared to deploy 17 spacecraft into a different orbit.
Because the missions are classified, those observations should not be treated as official confirmation of the spacecrafts’ purpose or capabilities.
The secrecy surrounding Saturday’s flight takes on additional significance because it occurred less than two weeks after Air Force Secretary Troy Meink made the Pentagon’s most explicit public acknowledgment to date that the United States already operates weapons in orbit.
Speaking Sept. 14 at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Meink said the Space Force has “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action.”
The Department of the Air Force subsequently publicized the announcement, describing the capabilities as part of an effort to counter rapidly evolving threats in space.
Meink did not disclose what the weapons are, how many are in orbit, where they are located or whether they employ kinetic, electronic, cyber or other effects.
He later declined to say whether the systems are kinetic or non-kinetic.
The military uses “space control” as a broad term encompassing capabilities intended to contest or control the space domain and affect an adversary’s ability to operate there.
Such systems can potentially include destructive kinetic weapons as well as non-kinetic technologies capable of interfering with satellites through electromagnetic, cyber or directed-energy effects.
There is no public evidence that the classified USSF-385 payload launched Saturday is one of the weapons Meink discussed. The timing of the two developments places them in the same broader national-security space environment, but the Pentagon has not linked the mission to Meink’s announcement.
Meink’s disclosure drew immediate criticism from China and Russia.
As CBS News reported, China’s Foreign Ministry warned against the “weaponization of outer space” and turning space into a “battlefield,” while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia wanted space to remain “free of any weapons.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun called on Washington to “stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space.”
Peskov said Moscow favored international efforts aimed at the “complete demilitarization of space.”
The United States, meanwhile, has increasingly described China and Russia as competitors developing their own counterspace capabilities.
U.S. military officials say both countries possess or are developing systems capable of threatening satellites that support American communications, intelligence, missile warning, navigation and military operations.
China has demonstrated a direct-ascent anti-satellite capability, most notably by destroying one of its own weather satellites during a 2007 test. Russia has also demonstrated anti-satellite capabilities and has been accused by U.S. officials of pursuing additional space-based counterspace systems.
The militarization of space is not new. Military satellites have supported reconnaissance, communications, missile warning and navigation for decades, while several countries have developed weapons capable of attacking satellites from the ground.
What made Meink’s Sept. 14 statement notable was the explicit acknowledgement that the United States now has “space control weapons” operating in orbit rather than merely systems on Earth capable of affecting objects in space.
The legal framework governing such systems is also narrower than is sometimes assumed.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits placing nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit, on celestial bodies or otherwise stationing them in outer space. It does not impose a blanket prohibition on all conventional weapons in orbit.
That distinction has become increasingly important as the United States, China and Russia develop technologies for protecting their own satellites and potentially denying adversaries use of theirs.
Space Force officials have increasingly described space as a warfighting domain because modern military operations depend heavily on satellites.
GPS positioning, precision-guided weapons, missile-warning systems, secure communications and intelligence collection all rely on spacecraft, meaning attacks on space infrastructure could affect military forces operating thousands of miles away.
Against that backdrop, launches such as USSF-385 are increasingly routine even when their individual objectives remain hidden from public view.
Vandenberg has become one of the country’s most important gateways for military and intelligence spacecraft destined for polar and other high-inclination orbits. Its location on California’s coast allows rockets to fly south over the Pacific without passing over heavily populated land.
Saturday’s Falcon 9 followed such a southerly trajectory after leaving SLC-4E.
The mission also demonstrated why reusable rockets have become increasingly important to the national-security launch program.
Rather than expend the entire rocket, SpaceX recovered B1100 aboard the drone ship and can potentially refurbish it for another mission. The same booster had a turnaround of roughly 35 days before USSF-385, according to launch-tracking records.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage, meanwhile, continued toward orbit with the classified payload after the first stage returned.
Public visibility effectively ended there.
SpaceX’s webcast stopped shortly after the booster landed, leaving the remainder of the mission — including the upper stage’s orbital maneuvers and the number, deployment and operation of its payloads — outside public view.
What is known is that the launch succeeded and continued a concentrated run of Space Force missions from Vandenberg.
What remains classified is considerably more consequential: what USSF-385 placed in orbit, what those spacecraft are designed to do and how they fit into the United States’ rapidly expanding military architecture in space.
Comments