Beyond that, many of America’s enemies have no reach.

There are no near-term potential military uses of cis-lunar space that cannot be better pursued from far closer to Earth. If, as seems entirely likely, the significant terrestrial opponents of the US all implode and disappear in the coming decade, there may well never be any necessary military use of cis-lunar space.

Starship will be a formidable delivery truck to LEO. Thus any talk of payload constraints anent LEO seems pointless.

As imaging sats and SARsats in LEO proliferate, it won’t be long before 24/7/365 coverage of every square inch of Earth is achieved – at least by our side. At that point – and probably well before – dodging in and out of hangars to avoid the overhead snoops will become a useless exercise for our opponents.

How about that? Another example of shoddy Chinese quality.

What a circumlunar thump does is get you beyond folks eyeing LEO. Larger LVs are useful in this regard as a distant object using cold gas thrusters can return on any timetable.

LEO watchers can do simple math–the smaller the LV, the more constraints payloads have.

It is how the Area 51 guys knew to hide assets in hangars when a Soviet “ashcan” was scheduled to pass overhead.

Perhaps the latter, but I doubt the former – especially if the observation is asymmetric or shared asymmetrically (e.g. China gives pictures of India to Pakistan).