China’s military is developing directed-energy weapons to attack U.S. military satellites in a future conflict, according to a new Defense Intelligence Agency report on space security threats made public this week.

The DIA says the People’s Liberation Army views laser and other beam weapons as “ideal counterspace weapons” based on their ability to cause both reversible and nonreversible damage to orbiting enemy satellites. According to the report, the PLA announced in January that laser weapons had entered a “golden age,” and that China’s weapons will include dazzlers that temporarily disable sensors.

“China has multiple ground-based laser weapons with varying power levels to disrupt, degrade, or damage satellites in [low earth orbit],” the report said. “By the late-2020s, China may field space-based directed energy systems and higher-powered ground-based directed energy systems capable of threatening satellites in higher orbits.”

What do “air superiority” and “air dominance” really mean in the age of drones? With unmanned aerial vehicles crowding the airspace between the ground and the higher-altitude domains of traditional aircraft, some national security insiders say the understanding the terms in wartime no longer applies.

“We can no longer claim air dominance. No country, I think, in the world can claim air superiority, air dominance,” says Andy Lowery, CEO of the California-based company Epirus, which builds high-power microwave platforms to counter autonomous drones.

“When you consider traditional air defense, there’s still no other country greater than the U.S. at building … Patriot missile systems, THAAD missile systems, in these large geographical cylinders. But those large geographical cylinders were designed to go after elephants,” Mr. Lowery said in a recent exclusive interview on the Threat Status podcast.

The war with Iran has not — and will not — pull America’s focus away from the Pacific theater and Communist China’s historic military buildup. That was a core message Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushed on a visit to the Philippines this week for an Association of Southeast Asian Nations defense ministers meeting. Mr. Seward traveled with Mr. Hegseth.

Defense chiefs from Japan, Australia and the Philippines discussed the security of the First Island Chain, a strategically vital area stretching from the Malay Peninsula and the Philippines north to Japan. Officials from South Korea, India, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia also met with Mr. Hegseth on the sidelines of the event. The Pentagon chief was joined on the trip by Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command.

The Chinese Communist Party’s stated goal of taking control of the U.S.-aligned island democracy of Taiwan, by force if necessary, hung over the ASEAN gathering. “These meetings, the amount of time we spend with ASEAN members, with Japan, with South Korea, with Australia, with the Philippines, are a reflection of a force posture shift,” Mr. Hegseth told Threat Status when asked how he was reassuring the region’s partners and allies that the U.S. was still focused on China and specifically the region around Taiwan.

U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced this week that a new air-launched hypersonic missile is entering the production phase as the first ultra-high-speed weapon for the service. A $694 million contract has been awarded to Lockheed Martin for production and fielding of the Air Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), also known by its military designator as the AGM-183A.

“This is a turning point in our advanced weapons roadmap,” Mr. Meink said in a statement. “By moving ARRW from test to production, we’re providing our combatant commanders with a credible, high-speed strike weapon capable of penetrating the most advanced anti-access and area-denial systems.”

No details were provided on when the missile, to be carried by B-52 bombers, will be operationally deployed. An Air Force photo published along with this week’s announcement showed one of the new missiles deployed under the wing of a B-52 as crews from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, and Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, looked on.

Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) “promises to link every sensor to every shooter at the speed of relevance,” according to retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. David Harris, who argues that it “needs three things working together: a backbone that moves the data; AI that turns it into something useful; and a commander with the authority to act on it.”

“The [Defense] department has spent seven years building the first, four years chasing the second and no years solving the third,” Mr. Harris writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times. “Mission command, pushing the decision to a human at the tactical edge, is part of the answer, but it assumes a human stands at that edge to receive it.”

“The department,” he writes, “must decide who holds the authority to act: the commander or the machine?”

• Oct. 30 — The Future of the Undersea Deterrent Enterprise, National Institute for Deterrence Studies

• Oct. 30 — Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, Commander of U.S. Africa Command, on U.S. Strategy and Security in Africa, Atlantic Council

• Nov. 2 — AI Power and National Security Conference: Open Models, Governance and U.S.-China Military Competition, Hudson Institute

• Nov. 16 — The Black Sea Blueprint for Taiwan: Lessons in Asymmetric Naval Warfare, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Nov. 17 — Special Threat Status Event: The Golden Age of Space, Threat Status

• Nov. 18 — Rebuilding the Arsenal of Freedom and Reindustrializing America, Hudson Institute

• Nov. 20-22 — Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada, HFX