The Pentagon wants to rocket troops through space to hot spots anywhere on the globe within two hours, and planners spent two days last month discussing how to do it, military documents show.
Civilian and military officials held a two-day conference at the National Security Space Office to plan development of the Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion (SUSTAIN) program. The invitation to the conference called the notion of space troopers a “potential revolutionary step in getting combat power to any point in the world in a timeframe unachievable today.” Attendees included senior Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force officers.
This would take time to achieve:
Emerging technology makes SUSTAIN a possibility, perhaps by 2030, said Baker Spring, a military analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Just as important, he said, is determining what troops could do if they managed to rocket into a crisis.
Yes, what would they do? I find the idea as stated ridiculous.
Still, aiming high is something we need to do to dominate space, the new high ground.
So given that the idea that we'd land a squad of highly trained troopers on the ground via space travel is asinine, does this idea have merit?
If the conference is just a ruse to cover the real purpose, yes. What if the plan isn't to land troops on Earth by 2030, but to gain the ability to reach into space and capture real estate rather than just destroy objects in Earth orbit? A squad of Marines would be a drop in the bucket on Earth, but in space in 20 years, 13 Marines would be a decisive ground force capable of entering and capturing anything any nation would put into orbit in this time frame.
If the Marine SUSTAIN craft is designed to reach orbit and allow Marines to board a space station rather than immediately come back down and deposit the Marines for an assault on Earth, this would be a tremendous capability.
