I want to see when that admission was made, and how someone got them to admit it. It was the most surprising part of the article for me.
Wouldn't it be great to see more defense spending introspection and honesty.
I wonder if there were any missions where a foreign spy satellite was captured inspected in orbit then sent on it's way?
My best guess for the continuing air force interest in a shuttle like platform (the x-37) is for exactly this reason. not bombs but satellite capture.
edit, I actually read the posted message. The requirement was for a once around then land. so consider my question unasked. Salutes
Surprisingly, the first result from the search returns [0]
[0] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/28243/could-space-...
The military purposes for the Shuttle were primarily servicing and refuelling the KH-11 satellites and launching other NRO payloads that couldn't ride a normal launcher.
The cargo bay and cross-range landing performance specifications were derived from those mission requirements.
From the Soviet point of view the Space Shuttles were the largest and fastest first strike nuclear bombers ever created. With enough of them in orbit you just obsoleted all other nuclear delivery methods.
Just because something pretends to be a civilian craft doesn't mean it can't be repurposed into a military one in no time at all.
I can't think of any major problems that the US government solved since the USSR collapsed. Maybe a little competition at the international level is needed.
The US has demonstrated that it no longer takes threats of MAD seriously and we'll destabilize any country that doesn't fall in line. Look to the obvious situation with Russia and continued pressure to sanction and damage the Chinese economy.
The only way I see this unipolar situation reversing is if someone actually lets some nukes fly
How is Russia invading Ukraine, and many countries, including the US, supporting the righteous Ukrainian defence effort any different than what happened during the Cold War in Vietnam, Afghanistan, a bunch of civil wars? MAD is still at play. If it were not, there'd be NATO troops at least from Poland helping defend Ukraine against the Russian agression.
And yes, Russia deserves punishment for it's brutal invasion of a neutral country with genocidal methods. Sanctions are the only possibility that doesn't result in nukes flying today, but sanctions it is. Every time a dictator's land grab wasn't responded to, but appeased, they just came back for more (Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Saddam Hussein).
China is a third world country and Russia is making itself into one.
Third world countries in the in the 1960 had life expectancy on the order of 35 years. The USSR twice that at 67. Colonialism was not a picnic for the people colonialised.
And to remind, much of USSR was (and much of Russia still is) colonized people. That, too, translated to rather big differences between the central European part of Russia and, say, Turkmenistan.
“The United States Cannot Afford to Lag Behind Russia”: Making the Case for an American Nuclear Icebreaker, 1957-1961
https://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol31/tnm_31_31-6...
Its not surprising Eisenhower vetoed it. He vetoed 39 bills in 1958 alone.
Can you tell me why this isn't surprising? What about Eisenhower and his vetoing bills in great numbers?
Many people believe that because he vetoed so many bills, it allowed his administration to run a surplus in three of his eight years in office.
This would be darkly amusing at the moment. Funding hardware to beat Russia isn’t as hard as it used to be.