No - no they can't. Referencing Starship Troopers is appropriate because this is fiction.
As [0] points out, and as I vividly recall from the antiquated books of my childhood, a similar concept was prominent in the 1979 Usborne Book of the Future. The idea of being able to put boots on the ground anywhere within an hour is probably still a military dream somewhere, although I don't think US doctrine has a place for that right now, since achieving air supremacy over the theater, a prerequisite to boots on the ground, would probably take longer than an hour.
[0] https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2015/12/Ithacus_and_SUSTA...
It would be more useful for the launch vehicle to return to its original pad for relaunch. It’s not like you’re going to refuel and refit it on the battlefield.
> Why would you do any of that if you could deliver 300,000 pounds on a Starship anywhere in the world in an hour?
How much does it cost to destroy that vehicle and its 300,000 pounds of cargo before it lands?
but again, the original plan was always good enough for humans dropping slowly on parachutes
This person was probably in the 24th ID at one point in their adult life. Their credibility stops about there.
That said, while the Marines dream about powered armor and self-deploying troops, the reality is nowhere near that yet.
As noted, one needs to have control of the LZ --- if that weren't critical, then Spec. Ops. would have actually done something with the idea of putting pods containing soldiers under the wings of Harrier jump jets, and the V-22 Osprey would have a forward-firing weapon --- keeping control of an airfield is hard, which is why AF Sec. Police train to fight against Spetsnaz and the U.S. had RoK Marines guarding their bases during Vietnam.
What does a supply chain look like in a time of drone warfare? How does one control a perimeter and maintain the surface of a runway against an opponent which is well-equipped? (For an example of how critical that can be, see AF-4590)
On the topic of USAF security forces training to fight Spetsnaz…lol.
The US actually did strap people to the sides of helicopters for medevac at one point. The TV show MASH showed one of them. (And yes, the Bell 47 was real.)
The lesson of the Skinnies is quite jarring for someone that didn't go through WW2. Earth outright terrorizes the Skinnies into submission.
I'm sure no one has ever thought of that! O:-)
In an age where all your significant opponents have nuclear ICBMs, anything which could look like a nuclear strike will be interpreted as such by your opponent in an open conflict and generate direct retaliation.
This is frankly weird to me how some American commentators like to pretend this has not been the reality for 70 years. I don’t know if it’s because most of America recent wars have been mostly asymmetric or if it’s because the army propaganda needed to be insanely strong to occult the long series of strategic losses despite the costs of the wars but it’s kind of scary.
The problem is these COD operetta heroes with a death wish due to no future voted in a warchieftain who does not deliver and they get antsy. Game Theory didnt factor in a humanity that would be selfdefeating in crisis mode.
This has happened before, and we're all alive because it doesn't really look like a nuclear strike: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident
A single rocket heading your way is not the massive salvo of missiles that you would expect for a counter-force attack, and a counter-value attack means that you still have the option to retaliate.
All the evidence points to people really not wanting to assume anything is a nuclear strike.
Now imagine that this is not a random peacetime incident but something that happens when both parties are expecting a war. This time the rocket is actually heading towards the capital or another strategic target. It's not a single rocket but a fleet of tens or even hundreds of rockets. And it's not a one-off incident but something that repeats a hundred times over the course of multiple wars.
What are the chances that the target never misinterprets it as a nuclear attack? And what are the chances that the attacker never chooses to use nuclear weapons, after everyone has learned that an attack like this is not a nuclear attack?
The article actually talks about moving a whole army on dozens of large rockets preferably near your enemy capital city. The discussion never was about a single rocket which logistically has very little capacity.
> This has happened before
This hasn’t happen before. That’s in 1995, after the end of the Cold War in a peaceful era with a rocket from a country which doesn’t host ICBM.
This incident has very little in common with what is being discussed and yet it still nearly gave way to retaliation. That’s actually nicely making my point about how out of touch what is being proposed is.
AFAIK, China didn't sign/ratify any nuclear non-proliferation treaties. So there's nothing stopping them from building it, except a crash of their exports as another cold war begins. And the new tariffs are set up to crash their exports anyway...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...
The concept is great, I don’t see it surviving that first “punch to the mouth”.
I thought we gave up MAD as a strategy almost fifty years ago? Also, if you're just going to do that, ICBMs are way more efficient than Starship.
1. Sending multiple large rockets on a ballistic trajectory might look like a nuclear attack.
2. Landing a rocket on a flat concrete pad in clear weather is vastly different from trying to land something on terrain while dodging surface to air missiles.
I also think the surprise factor is overrated. Any nation state with satellites would be able to spot you moving a lot of equipment around.
If you want to send Starship to the capital city of your enemy, and pretend this changes everything in war... well, it already exists, it's called nuclear missiles, and they've been around since the late '50s.
>This is a bigger change to warfighting than drones and electronics. Combined.
I'm struck by the contrast with the real war with Russia invading westwards. Sending a few tanks took six months and allowing some F16s took two years. Real war seems to move much slower than the article discusses. Meanwhile drones and electronics dominate on the battlefield.
Yeah, it’s about as much as a C-5 galaxy. But air-based sustainment is also largely impractical at scale. Sustainment is still firmly in the realm of ships. Airplanes (and space ships) can deliver with very low latency, but nothing matches the bandwidth of ships and rail
nocoiner•6mo ago
> Why not instead point your Starships at their capital city?
Can’t think of a single thing that could possibly go wrong with sending a few dozen ballistic projectiles toward the enemy’s capital.