Pat Flannery wrote:

What it would be great for is a quick-response ASAT or reconsat
launcher, as the C-17 can fly to the desired bearing and position over
the ocean, and have the spent stages fall into the sea. You do a
direct-ascent ASAT attack with a soft-kill capability and you can nail a
enemy satellite while it's outside their tracking coverage and get
plausible deniability in regards to its destruction.

Shades of the F15/MHV ASAT. I don't recall seeing any references of
its capability to launch in the southern hemisphere below the
groundtrack of the Soviet early warning sats in Molniya orbits and nail
them coming around perigee.