The Air Force has traditionally provided fire support and reconnaissance assets for the Army. The Army has developed precision fire support weapons, including recreating a new Army Air Force with UAVs that can strike targets and provide scouting abilities beyond what helicopters have done.
The Army doesn't need the Air Force as much given new technology, and it is foolish that the Air Force is fighting for shrinking market share in capabilities that the Army can provide. The Air Force needs to aim high and go to space to carve out new markets.
So the X-37B space plane seems like a vehicle to reach this goal:
An X-37B fleet would probably prove most useful as recon vehicles that could land and get new sensor configurations for different missions, Weeden explained. The space planes could also maneuver more than satellites can in order to adjust their orbits and provide flexible coverage of different areas on the ground.
"Let's say something pops up in area X in some part of the world, and a ground commander needs some capability there: [the X-37B] could configure and launch into an orbit that's optimized to cover that," Weeden told SPACE.com.
But this capability is over-rated given existing capabilities and the limitations of the X-37B:
But there are also some limitations, Weeden said, given that the space plane's payload size is roughly equivalent to a pickup truck bed. That means it likely would not find a good fit serving as a retrieval or repair ship for satellites.
The space shuttle's payload bay, by contrast, is huge. It could fit two entire X-37Bs inside.
"Once you put an arm and other equipment into the [X-37B] payload, how much room is left to put the satellite you capture?" Weeden pointed out. "Most military satellites are really big."
Even using the space plane to launch smaller satellites would be much less cost-effective than just several ORS payloads on their own rocket booster, Weeden concluded.
Yes, it makes no sense to use the X-37B for missions that can be carried out more cheaply and just as effectively by conventional rocket launches. So it is useless, then?
I'm no space expert, but if I may point out the obvious, the "X" at the beginning of the name stands for "experimental." The Air Force is experimenting with the maneuverability, reusability, and payload options of the space plane (kind of like a littoral combat ship in space with different mission payloads for the payload bay). And if the results are good, let me just speculate wildly here and consider the possibility that the Air Force then scales up the plane--perhaps to near shuttle size or even greater?--to a space plane that can hold useful payloads.
The United States Space Force may be embryonic now, but it will grow and develop if we set our mind to it.
Aim high.
