The Air Force has released its budget for the 2022 fiscal year and it includes some items you might expect to find ranging from the fabrication of new materials, to the development of pilot integration systems, and maintaining legacy airframes. However, some sharp-eyed analysts pointed found one item that reads like something out of a 1950's science fiction novel.
Modern U.S. military air power is able to move soldiers and materials anywhere in the world within 24 hours, but imagine if soldiers could be re-supplied from the continental United States at any future battlefield all in less than an hour?
This is the aim of one Air Force program with almost fifty million dollars of funding. The aim is not to build this capability from scratch, but rather to partner with the private sector to integrate these capabilities into the Dept. of Defense. Although not mentioned in the budget, SpaceX has been in the lead in developing reusable rockets that would be required for such an endeavor.
The "Air Force seeks to leverage the current multi-billion dollar commercial investment to develop the largest rockets ever, and with full reusability to develop and test the capability to leverage a commercial rocket to deliver AF cargo anywhere on the Earth in less than one hour, with a 100-ton capacity," the according to the budget line item report.
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This would mean, in theory, that more equipment could be packed into a large rocket than can be currently hauled by the Air Force's largest cargo plane before being launched anywhere around the globe in an hour before coming down and landing safely where U.S. military forces can retrieve their equipment and later re-use the rocket itself.
The budget mentions that new techniques to rapidly load and unload cargo will be developed as well as an air drop capability, meaning that after rocket re-entry, supplies would be jettisoned from the rocket and fall to earth via parachute.
It sounds like a crazy idea, maybe crazy enough to work.
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Reach Jack Murphy: jack@connectingvets.com or @JackMurphyRGR.