Is secret USAF robot plane X37B a warrior or a workhorse?

Digital Journal ^ | 6-6-2012 | Paul Wallis

[Renfield]

Sydney - A robot US space plane, X37B, has just completed a record feat of endurance, a whole year in space. This rather evasively publicized major achievement is a first for any kind of reusable spacecraft.

It

[CodeToad]

So, no answers, just a bunch of questions. Not much of an article.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

I have said this before but it is appropriate here. When the first operational space battle station comes over the horizon, it better have the Stars and Stripes on it or the world will sink into at least a millennium of savagery.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Where’s the link?

[null and void]

It’d be suicide for an opponent to risk major hits to its own infrastructure. They’d be blinded.

Check your premises.

An opponent prepared for a satellite free battlefield would have a significant advantage over a satellite dependent one.

A couple tons of BBs in a translunar orbit, with a return path putting a cloud of them in an east-to-west orbit could deny the high ground for centuries.

[Born to Conserve]

“A couple tons of BBs in a translunar orbit, with a return path putting a cloud of them in an east-to-west orbit could deny the high ground for centuries. “

You might be surprised what necessity can reap. I’m guessing they’ve already put together the technology, and will scale up when the time comes.

Can you say “lasers”?

[Myrddin]

A big magnetic mat might mitigate the problem. Collect the bbs and roll it up tight.

[null and void]

OK, aluminum pellets. Doesn’t much matter what they’re made of at a closing speed of Mach 25...

[Tucker39]

Well, we recently learned that they can now aim a laser beam from a stormcloud to a target on the ground and cause a lightning bolt to follow the laser beam to the target....and fry it!

[blam]

Touchdown! Infrared camera captures first picture of mysterious U.S. space plane landing in California (but what was it doing on its 15-month mission?)

Many pictures at this site.

Smaller than I thought.

[Sirius Lee]

Depends. If it could drop armor piercing rods from space, just using kinetic energy, on to and right on through, say, this place:

would that be considered a weapon?

[blam]

[Krankor]

[CapnJack]

Can you say “lasers”?

[Darksheare]

Ceramic BB’s, non-magnetic.
Doesn’t have to survive the hypervelocity impact anyway, just has to hit and do damage.
Silicon nitride would do nicely, it is used to make large black ball bearings.
A doubled up cloud of double ought sized with smaller pigeon shot sized ceramic pellets would work wonders at damaging satellites.
You don’t have to be fancy, just disable the power supplying solar cells or damage any optics the satellite has.

[null and void]

Ceramic, even better, transparent to radar, black to optical tracking.

Every hit generates scores of secondary projectiles.

Only a matter of days before everything in NEO is damaged, weeks for enough debris to percolate up to Clarke orbits to impact communications satellites, assuming the original distribution isn’t optimized to take them out first.

[Darksheare]

Yeah, this was stuff that was being discussed a loooooong time ago.
In the public domain no less.
Makes one wonder what was being discussed outside the public domain.

[Darksheare]

Well, not so much the BB’s part, the actual discussion was something about tossing a handful of nuts, washers and bolts ‘out the hatch’.

[AFreeBird]

I imagine quite a few warrior grunts would call themselves workhorses from time to time.

And indeed, many fighters and other combat aircraft have been designated as such over their tenure. A C130 can also be an AC130 Spectere. I don’t imagine the Airforce spent all that money only on a pickup truck.