Why?
It's a HIGH-altitude RECONNAISSANCE plane!
For the “Shock and Awe”. The thing was going like Mach 3 or something. It broke windows from one end of the country to the other. The Sandis never saw it coming and couldn’t figure out what the heck had happened until it was gone. It embarassed the hell out of the Sandis and let them know they could be as beligerent as they wanted to but that no matter what they did we could swat them down like a fly if we wanted to.