I found the Soviet Union's alleged theory explaining the American space shuttle to their own leadership[1] to be quite interesting. According to some documents submitted to the central committee by the head of the fledgling Keldysh institute (famous for it's faculty - Israel Gelfand and Alexey Lyapunov among others), the shuttle could theoretically launch in a trajectory from Vandenburg, CA south towards and over Antarctica and northwards over the Indian Ocean towards Moscow, with several nuclear weapons aboard, as a kind of hypersonic dive bomber.
This would, in a nuclear exchange, bring the mean time from initial detection of an American attack to the first nuclear strike on Moscow down from seven minutes (UGM-73 missiles on a depressed trajectory launched from the North Sea near Denmark)[2] to a little over three minutes.
Fears of this, according to the theory, led to several of the design specifications for the Buran shuttle. I find the extensive concerns about, and optimizing of strategy around, minimizing warning time in a nuclear exchange to be fascinating.
This would, in a nuclear exchange, bring the mean time from initial detection of an American attack to the first nuclear strike on Moscow down from seven minutes (UGM-73 missiles on a depressed trajectory launched from the North Sea near Denmark)[2] to a little over three minutes.
Fears of this, according to the theory, led to several of the design specifications for the Buran shuttle. I find the extensive concerns about, and optimizing of strategy around, minimizing warning time in a nuclear exchange to be fascinating.
[1]https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3855/1 [2]https://www.scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs03gronlu... (PDF)