My guess is that if we were actually pursuing such a program, we would first hear about it when those craft devastated an opponent in a war, or was accidentally shot down.

This is most likely pure indirection, IMO. They want the Chinese or Russia to think we are doing this for some reason. Maybe they want them to go down their own wild goose chase or they want them to think something of ours that they have seen recently is a result of this and not some more easily duplicable technology.