To me, reentry is more than just burning through the atmosphere
I consider everything from retro fire to landing to be part of the reentry phase. That may not be technically correct, but that's the way I see it. There are a lot of things that have to happen correctly to safely return from orbit. A failed parachute can ruin your day just as surely as a depressurized cabin (when no one was wearing a spacesuit) or a failed heat shield. The end result in each case was the same - a dead crew.
As Gary knows far better than any of us, reentry is a "non-trivial" engineering challenge, especially for a winged vehicle.