US Space Force unit to monitor region beyond Earth's geosynchronous orbit The US Space Force has created a unit, the 19th Space Defense Squadron, to monitor activity in the region beyond Earth's geosynchronous orbit, all the way out to the Moon and yonder. Commander of the 18th SDS, Lt. Col. Matt Lintker, confirmed the launch of the task force during a panel discussion at the intelligence and …
that laughed at President Trump for creating Space Force, the laugh is on you. The US is moving towards defending more than its borders, and in 50 years it would be nice to see what this develops into. But even at that, Trump only formalized what has been in serious discussion for more than 30 years. When I was in, the Army created US Army Space Command, which is the precursor to Space Command as a service just as US Army Air Corps was the precursor for the US Air Force. Those of us who were in USARSPACE were hoping for a Space Command as a standalone service back then.
Before the Space Force, each branch of the military had some sort of space division that met that branch's requirements, using the branch's existing infrastructure. After Space Force, precisely the same things are done, often by the same people but with a new Space Force bureaucracy added between the people who need a space based resource and the people who supply it.
Please explain the advantages of the new organisation.
"Please explain the advantages of the new organisation."
People asked the same question back in 1947, when the US Air Force became independent. Both Artmy and Navy have since found it necessary to operate their own aircraft to "meet that branch's requirements", as you put it. I expect the same happened when the US Marines split from the Navy.
Ask yourself why the existence of the USAF and Marine Corps soon ceased to be questioned. Basically, the new force had a job to do and the old diehards were getting in the way. The Space Force is going to move the same way, and probably in much the same timescale.
Ask yourself why the existence of the USAF and Marine Corps soon ceased to be questioned
I still question them. The USAF especially is a pointless organization, there is no value to having a separate branch with airplanes when all the other branches have them as well. That's one of the primary reasons we ended up with the F35 boondoogle, if there was no Air Force then the Army and Navy would have been free to design fighters targeted at their particular needs instead of creating a kitchen sink disaster that's more expensive and has less performance as a result.
Given the USAF, a separate branch for space makes no sense as it could have logically extended its role into space as it already was to some extent anyway, as I doubt there would ever be any reason for the Navy to have spaceships.
Sorry bud, but your knowledge of history is ignorant garbage (and I am being polite there). The USAAF was operating wholly independently of the rest of the Army by the end of WWII, and for good reasons; homeland based strategic bombing and intercept forces being just two of the more obvious ones. It was an irregular arrangement that couldn't stick. In 1948 the Key West Agreement formalised the postwar roles of the US Army, Navy and Air Force. There is a copy at
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/3894027/1948-Key-West-Agreement.pdf
I recommend that you read, mark and inwardly digest, as they say.
Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine missions (with aircraft) are completely different.
Air Force - air to air engagements, long distance bombing runs, and related support to the other services from land based aircraft.
Navy Aviators: Aircraft carriers, remote island air bases, and "First Strike" long distance air to air and air to ground combat missions, as well as at-sea operations (including at-sea rescue).
Marine Corps: Ground support, air to air combat, "first strike" and beach landing support (as well as general support of Naval operations)
Army: Mostly helicopters for air to ground and recon in support of major land engagements.
So each has aircraft, but they are different because the missions are different. I do not think Air Force needs carrier-capable aircraft nor to practice carrier landings. Similarly short range bombers launched from carriers should not be expected to fly long distances nor carry huge payloads like a B-52. Different missions.
When I was on a sub back in the day we would occasionally have Marines on board. Their mission was to guard and defend. I generally stayed out of the radio room and other places they were involved in so did not see them much. But sometimes 4 or 5 marines would be on the ship for a given mission, whatever it might be. Jokingly we patrolled "the sewers of Moscow" back during the cold war. And so my job was to help push the mobile surveillance and weapons platform through the water. The marines probably had to guard things that probably had much higher classification than I was allowed to know anything about, and to defend that equipment and/or secret and see to its destruction in the event of capture (and possibly shoot anyone with intimate knowledge of it including themselves). So there you have it, different mission, so different service, and they ride on ships when needed to perform that mission.
[That's kinda how it works in the U.S. military]
Ah, right, so the air force does air-to-air engagements, the navy does air-to-air combat missions and the marines do air-to-air combat. That's clear.
Of course it doesn't change the fact that, with the possible exception of the invasion of Grenada, the US has lost every war it has tried to fight since 1945.
Desert Storm? Panama? Surely those are both wins, as they had very clear objectives (push Iraq's army out of Qatar and destroy its ability to make war on its neighbors; remove Noreiga from power) When you enter a war without clear and achievable objectives, "winning" is elusive, as Putin is learning.
Anyway, "not winning" isn't the same as losing. When your declared opponent is "terror" winning is impossible. Even if you killed or captured every terrorist in the word and announced "mission accomplished" someone can decide to be a terrorist a month later, for reasons that didn't even exist during that "war".
If you measure by the number of large scale terrorist attacks on the US since 9/11 surely none of the US actions in the middle east should go down in the loss column. If however you measure by "turning a country in a US friendly democracy" that's a very different matter, but only moon faced neocons ever really believed that was achievable.
I wish presidents were required to clearly define achievable goals before entering any sort of conflict. Once troops are committed without any sort of plan, it becomes easy to get bogged down - because they see pulling troops out as admitting defeat.
That's why we had troops in Afghanistan for so long. Bush, Obama and Trump were all too cowardly to be the one who removed them, because the people on the ground knew what would happen when we did. We might have been surprised by how quickly the Taliban took it back, but no one was surprised that they did.
@DS999
"Bush, Obama and Trump were all too cowardly to be the one who removed them"
Good comment but just to add a correction- it was Trump who arranged to leave Afghanistan. However Biden won the election on the promise of doing the same which is why they left under Biden.
@DS999
"Trump arranged for it but was afraid to pull the trigger himself. He left it as an unexploded land mine for Biden to deal with. If he had won a second term I'll bet he would have come up with some excuse to stay."
Not heard that opinion before but I guess it could be possible. I am not convinced as Trump was setting up the groundwork to leave orderly. He did make a few bold moves internationally as President that others before him didnt dare to. It is of course possible.
He hadn't done any preparation for leaving which is why Biden had to extend the deadline and it was still a huge mess. Now maybe he told everyone to stop working on that preparation after he lost, and given his feelings about immigration the failure to set up any system to track those who helped the US and would need to get out of the country is understandable. He left everyone who helped the US to die when he pulled out of Syria.
@DS999
"He hadn't done any preparation for leaving"
Do we know this? Its understandable that Biden would make his own plans once in office hence the delay which is why I consider the withdrawal Bidens fault for running for election on it, extending the deadline to make his preparations then screw it up.
"He left everyone who helped the US to die when he pulled out of Syria."
Is that a bad thing? The situation in Syria was an abysmal failure he inherited where moderates were dead, terrorists ran the rebels and Russia was in control of dealing with the situation. Obama was very weak and kept moving red lines for fear of being dragged into another war but not strong enough to walk away. There was nothing to salvage from the situation and could have caused war with Russia.
Biden officials stated no preparation had been done by the previous administration for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Whether you want to believe them or not is up to you. Given how haphazard Trump did everything it is easy for me to believe, but it is equally easy to believe that really messy withdrawal left lots of fingers wanting to point elsewhere to share the burden of blame whether justified or not.
But it definitely is a bad thing to leave your allies to die when you pull out of Syria. The Kurds were totally screwed by Trump and they are absolutely not "terrorists". Even many of Trump's congressional allies and even a Fox news host was speaking out against his precipitous withdrawal and said it would leave ISIS in a stronger position than when we entered Syria.
Every time the US leaves allies behind to die, the less trust there will be in US aid in the future if that aid or boots on the ground may be quickly pulled up because the winds of public opinion have shifted or to make a political point.
@DS999
"Given how haphazard Trump did everything it is easy for me to believe, but it is equally easy to believe that really messy withdrawal left lots of fingers wanting to point elsewhere to share the burden of blame whether justified or not."
While the first option is possible I expect its more of the latter. Biden didnt need to run for president promising to withdraw and after winning he could have postponed further or changed his mind. Trump would have been to blame or take the credit if he had done it but it wasnt his decision anymore.
"But it definitely is a bad thing to leave your allies to die when you pull out of Syria."
But the US wasnt in Syria (officially). Obama did a half in half out and the Russians took over the job. He could have got the US involved fully but that would likely start a war with Russia and Trump was an anti war president.
"Even many of Trump's congressional allies and even a Fox news host was speaking out against his precipitous withdrawal and said it would leave ISIS in a stronger position than when we entered Syria."
The good news is Trump committed to smashing ISIS before the withdrawal and did so. It still kinda exists as an irritant but not as the threat it once was.
"Every time the US leaves allies behind to die, the less trust there will be in US aid in the future if that aid or boots on the ground may be quickly pulled up because the winds of public opinion have shifted or to make a political point."
Very true. Intervention comes with a cost which includes responsibility. I do think the US was overstretched. Supporting foreign wars and the ill defined wars leading to occupations could only go so far but required some competence in withdrawing.
That is also a good overview of why a Space Force would be beneficial. Each of these branches also share some common space-related needs, for example emergency satellite launch capability, LEO object tracking, (and perhaps even the new high orbit tracking) etc. It's just an organizational move to eliminate the unneeded overlap. The space-related needs of the branches are much more similar than their air support needs.
Most of the time the subs were using or dropping monitoring gear you could "install" into or onto submarine phone cables (i.e. those cross continent phone lines) near the bottoms of the continental shelves which would record the signal path when the incoming/outgoing audio, text, fax data was mostly analogue electrical waveforms back then and NOT digital pulses of laser light!
In the nineties and early 2000s, the subs and surface ships would use deep divers to actually cut open the pressurized fibre-optic cable and install photon counters or undetectable photonic switching/signal duplication gear to count the timing and values of the light signals to intercept BOTH unencrypted and encrypted comms. They could "FAKE" the ATM/SONET/frame/packet headers with new data values and re-time the signals so that end-point computing and network systems would NOT detect the underwater intercept gear! And since it was all underwater in the deep oceans nobody would see the gear either as the cable maintenance companies were either "bribed" or "ordered" to bypass specific sections of underwater communication cables.
It was a way to spy on important communications coming into and out of Russia and other Warsaw Pact countries plus a few other ones such as China, Pakistan, India and the Middle East too!
The subs also dropped hydrophones (underwater microphones) and water column movement and velocity sensors which would detect the thermohaline bulges and compressions that would occur when and where adversary attack and ICBM submarines moved between and through various temperature and salinity layers of the deep and near-shore oceans!
There was ALSO an active program to track those pesky USO (Unidentified Submerged Objects) which were doing 50kmh to 300+ kmh IN-WATER and then suddenly blasting into the sky (and deep space!) or suddenly diving into the ocean without hull damage at very high speeds! Nowadays, of course we now know HOW that THEM, THEY, THE ALIENS use super-cavitation or high-frequency/medium-frequency gravity wave technology to push the water and atmosphere out of the way so they don't destroy their ships!
The USOs tended to happen every few weeks in waves and then die down and then rise back to a much higher level of activity in an entirely different part of the ocean. When our subs could only do about 25 to 35 knots, it's kinda hard to keep up with a USO that is doing 200+ knots AND MORE while underwater!
Oh well! Know You Know!
V
"I expect the same happened when the US Marines split from the Navy."
Never happened. Marines and Navy have always been separate, but sister services. (U.S². Marines and U.S. Navy)
When a Marine force was formalized, some hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago, the need was obvious. Land army infantry was one skill set. Applying those infantry skills from he sea was a whole different animal. And like, marine skills from sailor skills. Sailors and marine Share some basic seamanship and fighting skills, but to be good at them requires a degree of specialization that effective sailors can't fight like Marines, and Marines can't sail like sailors.
Right, Royal Marines were apparently a standard part of the crew of a British Naval vessel back in the exploration days. i once toured a modern replica of Captain Cook's ship that went to Australia and new Zealand during an exploration in the late 1700's. It had a deck set up specifically for Royal Marines.
The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are based on the Royal Navy and Marines.
"Please explain the advantages of the new organisation."
Because saying "I'm a Colonel in the US Space Force" sounds way cooler than saying "I'm a Colonel in the US Army". Besides which, it's great fodder for video-game story lines, now that we've done demons, vampires and zombies to death.
I sort of mentioned the funding angle. It's easier for lawmakers to apportion money this way, and have a general idea of what it's going to be spent on, rather than "one big pile" to be fought over and apportioned according to bureaucratic whims of the moment.
I laugh at the stupidity of a government that continues to let cesspool porkbarrels continue to thrive long after the pork was used to buy some votes. No wonder the US, Canada, and the UK are in trillions of dollars of collective debt. Not one of them has the good sense to prune the dead wood from their budgets.
They just keep adding NEW pork barrels to the pile...
As someone who worked in UK defence research for 22yrs, I can factually state that idiot managers were promoted-out to other departments, and the only "dead wood" that was ever cut were the poor buggers actually doing the work!
We produced the best kit we could, despite the huge inverted pyramid of bean-counters and dolts above us. It was soul-destroying. We would then be lambasted by the same idiots, the Press, and the public for the piss-poor decisions they made.
The best thing that ever happened to me was getting knocked off my motorbike and smashed to a pulp by a careless driver on the way home from work - I got out, I was medically retired.
What really stung for me, was the useless sod who got an OBE off my work. Git.
/rant
As opposed to Russia & China, whose economies are mired in corruption?
My company has facilities in China. Competition there means "obligation to pay the most in bribes to the local CCP officials permits." And that's on top of that little obligatory IP extortion "partnership" issue.
The only ones who showed any success were The Boys, the Astro Investigation and Defense Service, as recorded in the documentary "Bad Taste", where they were shown defeating an attempt to begin harvesting the planet for the Crumb's Crunchy Delights interstellar fast food chain.
You mean His Serenity Donald John Trump, Duke of Dorkshit, Earl of Slurry. Apparently, Queen-Empress Victoria, noticing that Walt Disney was getting copyright incentives to keep producing stuff, even though he is now a decomposer decomposed, decided to get in on the act, and raise former President Trump to the hereditary peerage.
Having a separate service that can focus on space IS a good idea. It helps to avoid the "monolithic bureaucracy" issues and the tendency to re-apportion funds if everyone must share from a great big pile. The pile will most likely be allocated according to the current whims of the bureaucracy...
Space Force, I imagine, could turn into something a lot more science-fictiony at some point. But will they use Naval ranks or the traditional Army-based ones? That is, will a Captain be an O6 or an O3 when there are actual SPACE SHIPS? Or will their be Privates and Sergeants, or Spacemen and Petty Officers?
Then again, 'Stellar Navy' could end up being its own service, too... to combat those "space pirates".
Harrrr!
Actually, the US Space Force more or less uses the Air Force ranks, except the lower level non-com ranks are Specialist 1,2, and 3, rather than Airman 1,2, and 3. For commissioned officers, Space Force is the same as Air Force through the rank of Captain. But it has only 3 field grade ranks as opposed to the Air Force's 5, so the roles assigned to field grade officers differ from their Air Force counterparts. Not sure about general officers.
@M.V. Lipvig
"that laughed at President Trump for creating Space Force, the laugh is on you."
Only for those who get it. People laugh just because Trump did it, just as they only criticize if Trump did it. Can you imagine half the noise that would be made if Trump was half as bad as Biden?
M.V. Lipvig "The US is moving towards defending more than its borders, and in 50 years it would be nice to see what this develops into."
To protect us from the REPTILIANS!!!?
Or maybe to police made-up election fraud ?
'Pilled to the gills.
We laughed at Trump, or more accurately winced, because he "created" a name, and then did *nothing else* save for applying it to existing and on-going activities which were not under his purview, and then showed no further interest in the matter, which has been typical of him in the 40-odd years he's been on my radar.
Nothing wrong with having a "Space Force". Lots wrong with giving Trump credit for it.
Beyond GEOSYNC orbit are Space Force "Mission Sets" designed and assigned to monitor Space Weather such as heliosphere ejections (i.e. huge streams of radiation from the sun which could mess up satellites and on-earth power systems) --- It gives the U.S. Military and commercial assets the TIME to shut down or re-deploy critical assets to prevent induction-based electrical overloading and bit-destruction on computer systems.
Space Force ALSO has deep space probes (i.e. allocated and re-grouped from OTHER long-term 1980's, 1990's and 2000's era SAP - aka Special Access Progam deep space imaging and sensor probe programmes originally run by the NRO/NSA, DIA, DARPA, etc) to monitor incoming comets, meteors or other impact object which could threaten earth.
AND Space Force ALSO monitors for those pesky "Fast Movers" which form pretty much a veritable global superhighway filled with local-to-Earth and Deep-Space UFOs going to and from Earth Landmasses and it's Oceans.
Space Force now is unknowingly tasked to fulfil directives originally started by President Ronald Reagan in the mid-to-late 1980's to have human "Alpha Sites" ready on various satellite bodies (i.e. Moons) within our solar system and elsewhere and on secret space craft / space stations just in case humanity was devasted by rogue impactors, black holes, neutron stars or attacked by Aliens which would let the USA have remnants of humanity tasked to begin civilization again! Those are all SAP/CAP (Special Access/Compartmentalized Access Program) which only a VERY FEW people know about in the defence community! (Remind me to moon them on my next deep JAFO flight!)
Various personnel would be assigned to various teams (just like you see in the Stargate SG1 TV show!) to explore deep space and LIVE THERE in secret using much more advanced transport and living-space systems than what is currently publicized! Elon's Musk's plan to live on Mars and Beyond is already a foregone been-there-done-that-deal within the U.S. Near-Space and Deep-Space Assets community!
Space Force ALSO now has taken over the "Green Lady", "Spearfisher" and SR-75/Piggy-Back Craft recon programmes which are SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) and TSTO (Two Stage To Orbit) aerospace craft which deploy small secret satellites and handle the less critically-sensitive astronaut deployment programmes to low-orbit space stations hidden within recon satellites about the size of a school bus!
It is MIND-BOGGLING to know about the sheer amount of technology duplication and financial WASTE due to the inherent secrecy and compartmentalization and of the various Near-Space and Deep-Space progammes run by the USAF originally and now combined into Space Force! Far Too Many People are working on almost the SAME end-result but using different systems and technology but have NO KNOWLEDGE of each other which could save BILLIONS OF DOLLARS and save lots of time by cooperating and pooling personnel and resources!
NOW YOU KNOW THE REST OF THE STORY !!!
V
Is what the USA has been doing for almost a full century now. It cares more about its own commercial interests, either by direct use of force (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq), or violence through CIA proxies (Nicaragua, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan back in the 80s).
It's not like anyone outside the USA proper believes the "we're bringing democracy!" mantra, given how much the govt coddles friendly tyrants, such as the Saudi monarchs.
The US is moving towards defending more than its borders...
Defending from who or what? Do you expect a Bruce Willis style space rock deflection in the near future? Are there space aliens waiting to invade at the outer rim?
Military presence in space is not a good thing. We can't even play nice with each other on this planet. Why do we need to include space? A new frontier? But that should be for all of mankind, not some "US Space Force" or one country's dream of domination. It is nothing more than a "mine is bigger/better/badder than..." contest. We should save our planet first and play nice here, then we may actually have a chance of doing some good in our spatial neighborhood.
I'd be very surprised if several space-capable nations hadn't already deployed space-based/satellite-based weaponry for just that reason.
Mankind is depressingly ignorant, and woefully short on evolutionary progress. For some strange reason, the more backwards genes seem to propagate more often, leading to grunting hordes chanting their nations' names while telling themselves they're "special" because of where they were born on this planet.
Its all a matter of perspective. As long as we're divided into arbitrary groups, we're easier to control. That is the sole benefit to not considering the proper role of the UN going forward... too many of the issues we face are critical in nature and beyond the scope of any one nation dealing with. Especially considering the largest and most "advanced" are often the worst offenders on the environmental front.
"I'd be very surprised if several space-capable nations hadn't already deployed space-based/satellite-based weaponry for just that reason."
Although that may be tempting there are a few issues. No conventional warhead launched from orbit would be much more devastating than basically a lump of iron dropped from that height. You also have the difficulty of re-entry into the atmosphere and the problem of burning up, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of any warhead. So we are left with 'nuclear' weapons in space. And these require maintenance. Nuclear material being what it is, it degrades over time. I don't know how long they might last in space but there is also the problem of someone shooting them down. Unless you are going for the 'Goldeneye' approach of an EM pulse to knock out comms and power grids ( would that even work from space) what is the point of putting weapons in space?
Of course we know how to build a bomb that could devastate an area the size of France*, if we wanted to, but hopefully no one does, and an ICBM might be a cheaper and more reliable delivery method than a satellite.
*https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/#post-heading
"However, a study from 1963 suggested that, if detonated 28 miles (45 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth, a 10,000-megaton weapon could set fires over an area 500 miles (800 kilometers) in diameter. Which is to say, an area about the size of France."
Aaaand, you've got the problems of control and aiming. What happens if your poor grunt, lost in the fog of battle, angry and upset that some of his mates have been killed in front of him, and not reading his location correctly, gives his own location as the place to hit, instead of say eight metres over the way ... or someone reading his details over his shoulder in through the network and not feeling friendly towards him, "corrects" his details ...
That's the sort of problem that, I suspect, eventually got the proponents of the "rods from god" boondoggle to shut up. There's a similar problem with space-plane Space Marine insertion - to land anything designed to travel at hypersonic velocities just below orbital velocity, you need a rather long runway. No, if your opponent gets wind of this before you actually do it, he can temporarily "pave" the only runways you are likely to use, with all sorts of interesting pavement. A sandwich of oil, sand, and glass on the only runway long enough to use, would kill any Space Marines stupid enough to volunteer for such a mission. In other words, "rods from god" and space-plane Space Marine attack are a glorified form of Evolution in Action, fully deserving the Darwin Award.
There's a similar problem with space-plane Space Marine insertion - to land anything designed to travel at hypersonic velocities just below orbital velocity, you need a rather long runway.
I've seen at least one suggestion that Marines using suborbital hypersonic transports could be rapidly deployed anywhere in the world by parachute drop at the destination. Let's just say I wouldn't want to be the first live test of whatever ingenious piece of technology was used to make such a thing seem even half way plausible.
" ...There's a similar problem with space-plane Space Marine insertion - to land anything designed to travel at hypersonic velocities just below orbital velocity, you need a rather long runway....."
---
"They" have NEVER done that! The plane NEVER LANDS except back on the US mainland or in UK-controlled Diego Garcia! For any MODERN operator insertion, you install an Operator Ejection Capsule which is basically a ceramic-coated heat-shielded composite shell that can be ejected at high speed (5000+ mph) from an underside mission-specific payload bay or sometimes from a aerodynamically-shaped rear capsule that simply falls to Earth from high-up and then falls fast to deploy a low-altitude-open parachute (i.e. a HALO jump)
The operator(s) climbs out of the shell, gets their gear and as noiselessly as possible, destroys/buries the ejection capsule parts and goes on their mission. You can do single-person, two-person and four-person ejection modules nowadays. The capsules have small rebreather systems for breathing air and internal heating/cooling systems so they can be kept COMPLETELY separate from the main aerospace craft and deployed ANYWHERE in the world at any time!
Some of the more modern mission-specific ejection capsules which are deployed from now re-configured Green Lady or Spearfisher craft (and even the SR75 mothercraft / picky back spaceplane!) have enough room to carry foldable E-bikes, electric 4x4 scooters or gas-powered long-range cross-country motocross bikes with sidepacks, and have attachments for comms/computers, sniper rifles, personnel defence weapons, small munitions/mines/demolition systems and personal shelter and lifesaving gear which the operator takes along with them.
I've even seen a capsule with collapsible super-lightweight carbon-fibre-tube-based 4x4 DESERT AND ROCK RUNNING DUNE BUGGIES in them with TWEEL-based folding-wheel technology that literally folds out like a collapsible tent and now you have 100 km+ range electric or small-engine liquid fuel dune buggy that can take your 2 to 4 operators QUIETLY to their final mission launch points!
It's as claustrophobic as all hell but each operator is only in the capsule for maybe two to three hours maximum during flight operations. Even some modern HALE-III/HALE-IV DRONES have small ejection capsules that can be carried for special operations personnel to be deployed in uncontested air environments (usually!) for specialized missions where actual open-air parachuting in just too risky or where specialized gear (like the folding dune buggy!) and munitions needs to be carried a distance away from the final area of operations!
For ONE interesting story told in deep whispers just a few years ago, some old F117a Stealth Fighters had their internal bomb bays reconfigured to fit a custom built HALO operator ejection capsule. The F117a has two internal bomb bays that when you fit a capsule in them, the INTERIOR SPACE of each capsule would be about 10 feet long at 30 inches wide and 30 inches deep which is enough room to carry a single small-stature operator and their folding e-bike and camp/arms gear! (it's cramped as hell but doable on a mental and physical basis for specially trained personnel)
Since an F117a has TWO of those bomb-bays, you could deliver TWO operators at tree-top level into contested airspace and dump the capsule deep into hostile territory. The OTHER operators would be delivered during the same mission or in a separate mission later on!
NOW YOU NOW THE REST OF THE STORY !!!!
V
"Controlling " space from orbit sounds like a great idea until you start thinking out the details. Unfortunately, the reality is that weapons in space are extraordinarily vulnerable to ground based attacks. And ground based attacks on objects in orbit are relatively inexpensive. At least relative to the costs of building and supplying an orbital fortress.
As an analogy, consider climbing a tree with a bag of rocks. Gives you a certain advantage over your enemy. ... Unless they have chain saws.
We need a Mole Force(tm) to counter attacks between the Army's traditional foxhole depth and the lower mantle ...... Yet Another Anonymous coward
That sounds very much like a call to action/special military operation to counter insurgency for the likes of Weather Underground type sleeper cells, Yet Another Anonymous coward.
And there are variations on that theme already being explored, for it is recognised as being fundamentally and radically Great Games Changing ........
A small new cyber service could be the best home for fostering the next generation of innovative leaders. It would enable the organizational perspective necessary to identify which cyber capabilities the military will need to fight in the domain in decades to come. It would also create new acquisition and procurement structures that produce innovative technologies. With the long-term mission in mind, the new service could also look ahead towards cyber-domain strategy that exceeds supporting operations taking place within other domains. ...... https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2022/4/22/us-cant-wait-any-longer-for-a-cyber-force
Who Dares Wins Wins TS/SCI Virtual Terrain Team Territory, eh? :-)
"....We need a Mole Force(tm) to counter attacks between the Army's traditional foxhole depth and the lower mantle...."
---
BOTH the U.S. Army AND The U.S. Marine Corps have SUB-SURFACE operations where forces are trained and deployed to fight in underground structures, basements, confined spaces, tunnel systems, deep mines, natural and artificially-made caverns and other sub-surface places. They can operate in total darkness using nightvision goggles or use powerful rapid-deployment lighting systems to light their way.
They have robot diggers and underground-deployable weapons and munitions, plus small flying, crawling, wheeled and water-borne drones for imaging and sensing and larger munitions for ensuring those underground places cannot be used by enemy forces.
They have been operational for at least five years now on a large-scale formally-structured basis and probably 10 to 15 years on a service-specific basis due to the Afghanistan conflict which needed personnel with underground operations expertise!
NOW YO KNOW THE REST OF THE STORY!
V
Isn't the US 'Space Force' supposed to be taking part in the plan to bring 'Donald J Trump' back to the Whitehouse?
OR...
Is that just some fake news spread by people like Marjorie 'I can't remember, I don't recall' Taylor Greene?
TBH, the USA is fast descending to the level of a 3rd rate dictatorship (or will be when Trump gets back into Penn Avenue).
The GQP have been learning from their lord and master Putin.
If you can get out... do it now.
Trump for 2024 with De Santis as VP. Truly a dream ticket.
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