Did the Space Shuttle have "military uses"?

Question

In an interview with Oleg Kotov, a Russian cosmonaut, he makes an ambiguous statement on the military uses of the Space Shuttle:

New Scientist: After the cold war, why didn't Russia maintain its shuttle programme?

Oleg Kotov: We had no civilian tasks for Buran and the military ones were no longer needed. It was originally designed as a military system for weapon delivery, maybe even nuclear weapons. The American shuttle also has military uses.

Is this true? Did the American shuttle have "military uses"? What were these uses? Was it, as with Buran, designed to also function as a weapon delivery vehicle?

Answer 1

There was originally supposed to be a "blue" (Air Force) Shuttle. Military missions benefit from retrograde orbits, so there was originally supposed to be a west coast launch facility (Vandenberg) as well.

The shuttle was saddled with large cross-range landing requirements which were entirely due to the DoD's involvement (and never used). As chiron has pointed out, the STS was used for several DoD payloads as well.

The cross-range requirement was particularly damaging to the whole system's life span. It drove the size of the aerosurfaces — which were already much larger than they had to be due to the uncertainty of the flight regime when they were designed. The vertical stabilizer alone on the shuttle is probably twice as big as it needs to be to provide the control authority needed by the Orbiter. So much dead weight….

Answer 2

There were shuttle launches which had military tasks:

• STS-4

  24 Jun 1982, Columbia
  Crew: Thomas K. Mattingly II, Henry W. Hartsfield, Jr.
  Payload: Classified US Air Force payload of two missile launch-detection systems

• STS-51-C

  24 Jan 1985, Discovery
  Crew: T. Mattingly, L. Shriver, E. Onizuka, J. Buchli - all military and G. Payton - military engineer (his name was a secret for 2 years).
  Payload: Magnum satellite - radio intelligence

• STS-51-J

  3 Oct 1985, Atlantis
  Crew: K. Bobko, R. Grabe, D. Hilmers, R. Stewart - all military and W. Pailes - military engineer.
  Payload: Two military communication satellites - DSCS-3

• STS-27

  1 Dec 1988, Atlantis
  Crew: M. Mullane, R. Gibson, J. Ross, W. Shepherd
  Payload: Lacrosse satellite - radar intelligence (maybe?)

• STS-28

  Aug 1989, Columbia
  Crew: B. Shaw, R. Richards, J. Adamson, D. Leestma, M. Brown.
  Payload: photo intelligence satellite - Key Hole or SDS-2 (maybe?)

• STS-33

  23 Nov 1989, Discovery
  Crew: M. Carter, S. Musgrave, K. Thornton, F. Gregory, J. Blaha.
  Payload: Magnum(Orion) (maybe?)

• STS-36

  28 Feb 1990, Atlantis
  Crew: J. Creighton, J. Casper, D. Hilmers, P. Thout, M. Mallein.
  Payload: AFP-731 satellite (maybe stealth satellite)

• STS-38

  15 Nov 1990, Atlantis
  Crew:R. Covey, F. Culbertson, C. Meade, R. Springer, C. Gemar.
  Payload: AFP-658 satellite or SDS-2 satellite

• STS-39

  28 Apr 1991, Discovery
  Crew: M. Coats, B. Hammond, G. Harbaugh, D. McMonagle, G. Bluford, L. Veach, R. Hieb
  Payload: AFP-675 satellite

• STS-44

  24 Nov 1991, Atlantis
  Crew: T. Henricks, J. Voss, M. Runco, T. Hennen.
  Payload: DSP satellite (rocket attack alarm)

• STS-53

  2 Dec 1992, Discovery
  Crew: D. Walker, R. Cabana, M. Clifford, G. Bludford, J. Voss.
  Payload: SDS-2 (retransmission satellite)

This is from one Russian magazine. So I cannot say this is all true. But it's some useful info:)

Answer 3

One of the design drivers for the Space Shuttle was an Air Force requirement for a cross-range of 2000 km. This was laid out in Reference Missions 3A and 3B:

• 3A: launch into polar orbit (from Vandenberg), launch a satellite and land at Vandenberg within one orbit. This (specifically, the HEXAGON satellite) was the initial driver for the length of the payload bay and payload weight. The cross-range requirement allowed the landing at Vandenberg even though Earth has rotated a bit during the orbit (a straight-line mission would have ended up in the ocean).

• 3B: launch into 100 nautical mile (185.2 km) polar orbit from Vandenberg, retrieve a 25,000 lb (11,340 kg) satellite and land at Vandenberg within one orbit.

The goal of these single-orbit missions was presumably to deploy or retrieve without giving the Soviet Union a chance to establish the Shuttle's orbital parameters over multiple orbits or worse, give them the chance to shoot down the Shuttle.

This mission profile was never used in practice. The highest inclination orbit flown by a Shuttle was out of the Cape using a performance-costly "dogleg" maneuver to avoid the coastline. It reached 62 degrees inclination (this was STS-36). Unsurprisingly, perhaps, this was one of the classified DOD missions (thanks to Organic Marble for the addition). A polar orbit would have required a launch from Vandenberg. A Shuttle launch site was prepared there, but was never used.

This article has some interesting references to this mission:

Somewhat surprisingly, although the NRO did not choose to redesign the HEXAGON for recovery and refurbishment at this time, the requirement to do so was still incorporated into the space shuttle’s design. A 1973 internal Johnson Space Center document established requirements 3A and 3B for the shuttle. The first requirement was the ability to launch a large payload into polar orbit and return the shuttle to its launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The latter required the shuttle to launch into the same orbit and conduct a rapid rendezvous and retrieval of the same payload that would have been launched under requirement 3A. The shuttle then would have returned to the launch site, this time carrying 11,340 kilograms in its payload bay. This is the same mass listed in a declassified document for HEXAGON vehicles 7–12, plus equipment in the shuttle bay for holding the spacecraft. However, a HEXAGON at the end of its mission, with its reentry vehicles and film and fuel expended, would have been considerably lighter.

HEXAGON was a series of spy satellites that used photographic film. The film was spooled into a reentry capsule, and each satellite carried 4 of these capsules. When full, the capsule would be dropped off for recovery on the ground.

That made HEXAGON expensive to use as satellite lifetime was limited by its film supply. You can see why retrieval and relaunch was an attractive option.

By the time the Shuttle was operational, HEXAGON was replaced with KENNEN, which used a CCD instead of film and would have less need for servicing missions.

Answer 4

Any launcher that can carry a warhead payload into orbit has military uses.

In point of fact, the first civilian launch vehicles were in fact ICBMs with science payloads instead of warheads.

Further, any orbital camera with a 1m or smaller surface object resolution has military uses; current civil cameras in orbit are below 20cm surface resolution. (I was able to see a roughly 15cm wide post on a 2013 orbital image on google maps, and it was more than 1 pixel wide. I can make out 18cm wide by 40cm long mailboxes on the same image. If I can make out individual mailboxes on civil orbital imaging, then I can identify most military vehicles, at least as to type and location.

Answer 5

While the Shuttle served as generic launcher of satellites, and a manned platform for space experiments, including military technology, that was nothing other platforms would not be capable of.

The one distinguishing task that only the Shuttle was meant to be capable of — also, the one justification for its bulky construction, one never exploited in practice either — was the ability to steal other countries' satellites from orbit.

While the Shuttle did retrieve a couple satellites, and even landed four of them, that was always with the owner's full consent, two faulty communication satellites retrieved for repair, refurbishing and relaunch, and two unmanned science platforms for long-term experiments, retrieved to process the results of these experiments. The shuttle was meant to be able to "steal" a satellite though — without the owner's consent, and, to protect the payload during reentry, carried a bulky cargo bay that had to be shielded for reentry, increasing the dry mass greatly. This was never done, and the huge expense for lifting the cargo bay never appeared justified by practical use.

Answer 6

There is a whole bunch of detail about the whole military design aspect of the Space Shuttle in the book "Into the Black" by Rowland White. As an aside, it was a fascinating read about using the KENNEN satellites to take images of the first Space Shuttles to verify the integrity of the underside tiles.