> Your friend is mixing together some stuff in telephone game style. Are they? They said: >> developed Buran to match what they saw as the space warfare cap

> Your friend is mixing together some stuff in telephone game style. Are they? They said: >> developed Buran to match what they saw as the space warfare capabilities that USA gained with the Shuttle "what they saw" being the important part. Everything that follows is a seemingly legit interpretation of what the Shuttle can do, if you (reasonably) assume the U.S. wasn't fully disclosing all capabilities and purposes. Even if they were wrong about the capabilities of the shuttle (I'm in no place to say) that doesn't mean that the friend was at all inaccurate in what they reported.