Space Shuttle

Many shuttle missions have been partly or entirely military in nature. Eight military missions—the majority—have been devoted to the deployment of secret military satellites in three categories: signals intelligence (i.e., eavesdropping on radio communications), optical and radar reconnaissance of the Earth, and military communications. All these deployments occurred between 1982 and 1990, after which the military has chosen to use uncrewed launch rockets for all classified missions. The shuttle has also supported several military experimental missions and nonclassified satellite deployments. One such was the Discovery mission launched April 28, 1991 (STS-39), which carried multi-experiment hardware platforms designed to be released into space then retrieved by the shuttle after having recorded various observations of space conditions. All science aboard STS-39 was related to the Strategic Defense Initiative.

The United States military is developing an armed space shuttle system or "military spaceplane" of its own, and says that it intends to deploy such a system by 2012. According to an Air Force status report released in January, 2002, "a military spaceplane armed with a variety of weapons payloads (e.g. unitary penetrator, small diameter bombs, etc.) will be able to precisely attack and destroy a considerable number of critical targets while satisfying the requirement for precise weapons (i.e. circular error probable [CEP] of less than or equal to three meters).... Spaceplanes can support a wide range of military missions including a worldwide precision strike capability; rapid unpredictable reconnaissance; new space control and missile defense capabilities; and both conventional and new tactical spacelift missions that enable augmentation and reconstitution of space assets." The military spaceplane would also enable the military to deploy satellites on short notice. The Air Force envisions a fleet of some ten spaceplanes stationed in the continental United States as one component of a "Global Strike Task Force" that, it says, will be "capable of striking any target in the world within 24 hours."