I was just musing today that I wouldn't be surprised if the Space Shuttle orbiters are armed with some sort of simple ballistic weaponry. Think about it... the commander and pilot are always military officers, and no one else aboard the shuttle would need to know.
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Do you mean the shuttle fuselage itself is armed, and at the touch of a button in the cockpit some hidden gun ports open?
Or do you mean the pilots have personal armaments stored somwhere inside to defend themselves against (presumably) alien invasion or mutiny? Or possible attacks by Ernst Blofeld or Hugo Drax?
Barry: External weapons, for use against other spacecraft or satellites.
I think it is far more likely that there is a "contingency plan" to convert some "innocuous" piece of equipment on the shuttle into an "improvised weapon". We have all sorts of treaties with the Russians to prevent us from sending weapons up, but that doesn't mean that we can't "come up with something" ala Apollo 13 once we are up there.
Actually, upon reconsideration, maybe we do have something on it. When the Columbia broke up over East Texas, they had a concerted effort to recover some "crypto gear" off that the Israelis were supposed to have put on the shuttle. Perhaps it wasn't cryto gear, and the reason they were so worried about it is that a Marshall, TX hayseed might not know what a code machine looks like, but he sure as hell knows what a rotary autocannon looks like.
Phelps: I just can't think of any reasons not to put 100 pounds or so of weaponry on the Shuttle.