Pentagon's Chief Engineer: Russia, China to Blame for Trump's Space Force

Russia and China are responsible for militarizing space, leading to President Donald Trump's plan to create a Space Force, according to the Pentagon's top engineer.

"We are not the people who choose to weaponize space, but if we are challenged, we will respond," Michael Griffin, former NASA administrator, said while at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, on Wednesday, according to CNBC. "The Defense Department is today working on a means to defend our existing capabilities and we will be working on methods to project our national power onto our adversaries."

He added that the Pentagon has fast-tracked its own space-based systems because Russia and China have both researched hypersonics, which is a weapon that the United States cannot defend against at this time.

"It is our adversaries, not us, who have chosen to weaponize this type of capability," he said.

"The Chinese have been much more thoughtful in their systems development because they are developing long-range tactical precision-guided systems that will be really influential in a conventional fight," Griffin said. "The Chinese ability to hold our forward deployed assets at risk with very high speed and very hard to intercept precision-guided systems is something to which we have to respond," he added.

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