[gsmith2]

Given Reuters cite the air force as their source, would anyone hazard theories as to why they're so happy to announce the movements of a supposedly secret plane? It's pretty much in the news every time anything happens involving it, which seems quite intentional.

Is it perhaps just some kind of announcement of a capability to foreign countries?

[Valgrim]

Anything in orbit can (and is) actively tracked by amateur and professionnal astronomers around the world. The secret aspect of the X37B plane is it's mission. Nobody knows what it was doing up there. Hypotheses range from carrying weapons, spying, or doing experiments. In any case, it is certainly also used as propaganda, a show of strength.

[beerandt]

And I believe even the pro trackers lost it at least once, until it was rediscovered by accident. Which adds intrigue.

Not counting foreign intelligence, obviously.

[ryanmercer]

>Anything in orbit can (and is) actively tracked by amateur and professionnal astronomers around the world.

Indeed, I follow a guy on twitter that has photographed it.

Quickest link I could find to one of the photos https://www.space.com/x-37b-space-plane-skywatcher-photo.htm...

And here is his account where he also has photos of stuff like the ISS https://twitter.com/ralfvandebergh

[anonu]

Agreed with you regarding a show of strength. I can imagine that any release of information is carefully calibrated. After all, the picture in the article with men in spacesuits circling the aircraft is pretty cool. I doubt this is a "leaked" pic...

[detaro]

Is this really something they could effectively hide otherwise from other space powers? If not, telling the world about it doesn't hurt much, is good PR, might make running the mission easier (if it was known during the flight and coordinated with other users of space), and the question of what it did is probably more interesting anyways.

EDIT: looked it up a bit: both the start of this and previous missions had media coverage, and amateurs temporarily tracked the plane, so no point in secrecy.

[BurningFrog]

> It's pretty much in the news every time anything happens involving it

It's in the news every time they decide to put it in the news. Many other things could happen in secret.

[RaiseProfits]

Anything for good PR for a military budget.

[thrax]

Because Trump bragged about it with the whole "we're gonna have a space force!" rant. Probably just made sense to make it public now.

[LegitShady]

It was spying on Baghdadi personally this whole time maybe.

[dwoozle]

The US military is not actually very good at war — the nuts and bolts of combat and conquest. They maintain an aura of invincibility through PR which is questioned every time they fail at war (the majority of the times since World War II) or fail to carry out the basic actions of war making, like driving ships: https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swo... .

[rcurry]

You don’t have to be good at war, you just have to be better than everybody else. And that’s what sets the US military apart.

[fnordfnordfnord]

Having more helps too!

[SketchySeaBeast]

More military or war?

[fnordfnordfnord]

More of everything, especially guns.

[bsder]

> The US military is not actually very good at war

How do you define "good" at war? By the time you've reached "war" as a solution, "good" really isn't on the table.

Pretty much the only way to be "good" at war is to be willing to kill every single person in the theatre--civilians included. You are "good" at war and "win" in that case--there is no enemy left.

We also have a word for that--genocide. And we view that very negatively for good reason.

[rebuilder]

Where do you get the idea that the end-goal for use of military force is inevitably genocide?

You win a war when the outcome lets you plausibly declare victory.

[monocasa]

How about their own metrics? Losing a carrier group to a bunch of speed boats and missiles in their own war games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

[Catsandkites]

Isn't that article misleading though? For example the motorcycle messengers had "instantaneous communication" iirc.

[monocasa]

[citation needed]

[serf]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/sep/06/usa.iraq

the same article linked in the wiki article that mentions motorcycle use.

[ryanmercer]

I mean you have this massive small-town sized ship (6000~ crew) and it's support ships, and then you have a bunch of agile, fast moving, speedboats that present very small targets that bounce across the waves that are capable of carrying enough explosives to put a hole in the hull...

Obviously the swarm of small things that are effectively man-piloted missiles are going to be able to take out the slow 200 million pound behemoth that requires 3-5 miles to turn around.

[monocasa]

Carrier groups are specifically designed to combat these kinds of threats. That's why "carrier killer" missiles like China's DH-26 are hypersonic; it's because that's what you're supposed to have to do to overwhelm a carrier group.

[ryanmercer]

Carrier groups are meant to take out proper ships, not small speedboats. You can have a hypersonic missile all you want, but when a speedboat can rapidly change speed and direction unlike even something small like cyclone-class patrol craft.

Change generic speedboat to fastboat and you have something that can do 30-90mph (50-80 knots) depending on wave conditions while the previously m entioned cyclone-class tops out at 40mph (35 knots).

Carrier groups aren't exactly in a tight circle around an aircraft carrier either and then you have to consider friendly fire (with deck guns/artillery) so enough much smaller craft can come zooming in and easily overwhelm any defensive capabilities.

Depending on distances and angle you might be firing a 62 caliber projectile directly at your own ships with a craft randomly adjusting course, in choppy waters. Software is only going to do so much to increase the odds of hitting your target and something like a deck gun is going to be used long before anti-ship missiles that cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars well into million dollar plus range a pop. Especially if you have a half dozen, a dozen, two dozen cheaply acquired speedboats/fast boats coming at you.

Naval warfare isn't much different now than it was hundreds of years ago for proper ships. Sure the projectiles can be laser guided and carry way more destructive potential while the ships can move under their own power but you're still talking about incredibly heavy ships that move slow and are bobbing up and down in the water.

Similarly put a dozen guys on performance dirt bikes and give them explosive backpacks and throw them at an M1 Abrams and unless you have one hell of a lucky gunner, one of those dozen people is going to get right up on that tank and at a minimum will render it immobile.

Naval ships are meant to fight other ships and in the case of the aircraft carrier itself, simply support a small fleet of aircraft. They are not designed, or intended to, fight multiple much smaller craft. Speedboats have very limited ranges, rarely leave coastal waters and can't carry any weapon system that poses a risk to naval vessels EXCEPT for shoulder-fired rockets and by acting as suicide man-piloted missiles laden with explosives.