The USAF is prepping their second X-37B for its flight. The flight of the first X-37B caused a stir. It has made the world wonder about what its meant for. The USAF stated that it was a tech demo mission carrying new technologies to be flight tested. Whatever it may officially is said to be, the USAF now seems to have a new spy plane/easily retaskable satellite that can be brought back and reconfig'ed really, really easily.
China and Russia expressed their misgivings about the X-37B, calling it unnecessary and provocative.
Interestingly, China has now claimed that they are working on their own as a response. It has been met with doubts by the milbloggers. This seems to be consistent with their commentary about ASAT and ABM weaponry while pursuing their own. Their efforts culminated in the infamous Jan 11, 2007 ASAT test[1]. Condemn and develop is a consistent pattern here.
Likewise, the Russians have claimed that they have a spacecraft along these lines already. This, too, has been met with skepticism. The Russians had been doing a lot of spaceplane development almost 30 years ago, including the Buran (now in a junkyard) and MiG-105. However, that was ages ago and under the auspices of the Soviet Union. I doubt that they have the personnel, tooling or knowledge base from back then to do the work. However, I have been wrong before and could be again.
1. It produced an interesting diplomatic response from the US that we are aware of because of the wikileaks fiasco and in turn an ASAT demo by a standard missile off of a US cruiser
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