thedrifter
02-15-06, 08:22 AM
Future Launch
By Hilburn, Matt
RedNova
A few visionary Marines would take expeditionary warfare to new heights
Rapid Insertion
A Marine Corps vision of the future: Tactical units deployed to any spot on the globe within two hours.
* Timeline: At least 30 years.
* Hot Eagle, a DARPA/Air Force lab project, contains a glimpse of a future space vehicle.
* A Marine Corps space transport vehicle would also deliver robots to surveil the battlespace.
Think back to the Iranian hostage crisis of the late 1970s. For 444 days, the United States was rendered impotent after a mob of Iranians overran the Marine Guard and took the U.S. Embassy staff hostage.
President Jimmy Carter, who had promised during his election campaign to reverse the country's "crisis of confidence" and "national malaise," looked powerless during the long hostage crisis as Americans were reminded nightly that their countrymen were being held against their will, and there was nothing the United States could do about it.
When the U.S. military attempted to take action with a risky, two- day rescue mission involving a deadof-night desert rendezvous of a number of planes and helicopters - it ended in a disaster that cost the lives of eight service members, three of them Marines, and national pride was dealt a further blow.
If a few visionary Marines have their way, however, the United States in the future will have important new tactics to apply to a fast-breaking crisis half a world away.
Combat commanders would be able to rocket a squad of Marines to the scene of an emergency anywhere in the world within two hours. These future Marines could have combat capabilities that can now only be imagined. Yet even armed with some of todays modest nonlethal weapons, such as gooey nets, skin irritants and sound weapons, a squad of Marines could, at the very least, buy time until the U.S. military was able to mount a more significant defense of, for example, an embassy under siege. And just being able to get to a trouble spot so quickly would have a huge psychological impact on potential adversaries.
As far-fetched as such a scenario may seem, there is a small cadre of space advocates, in the private sector and military, working to make it a reality. These advocates admit that initial response from the defense community has ranged from disbelief to sardonic comments about the probable costs involved, given the technological hurdles that must be overcome and tight defense budgets with little room for costly space programs.
But the Marine Corps is serious enough to have come up with a Universal Needs Statement for such an effort, signed in 2002 by retired Lt. Gen. Emil R. Bedard, thendeputy commandant for Plans, Policies and Operations.
The needs statement - an acquisition document to alert government and industry about possible future requirements - called for a "Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion (SUSTAIN) capability" that would "transport small, mission-tailored units through space from any point on the globe to a contingency at any other point on the globe within minutes of National Command Authority to introduce such forces."
In addition to fending off would-be embassy attackers, a SUSTAIN vehicle could be used for operations similar to what was done in Afghanistan in 2001, when the U.S. military inserted special operations troops to liaise with Northern Alliance forces to better prepare them for engaging the Taliban.
The idea is being championed by two former Marines, Franz Gayl, the science and technology adviser to the Marine Corps' deputy commandant for Plans, Policy and Operations, and Roosevelt Lafontant, who now works for the Schafer Corp., a technology company with a close relationship with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
A Marine Corps needs statement has called for a "Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion (SUSTAIN) capability" that would rocket a squad of Marines to the scene of an emergency anywhere in the world within two hours. A joint Air Force Research Lab/DARPA project called hot Eagle to study a reusable upper-stage space vehicle is tailored to that needs statement.
SUSTAIN has advocates on high as well. Brig. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer, then-director, Strategy and Plans Division, Plans, Policies and Operations at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, told the Senate subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space in 2003 that the revival of NASAs space exploration activities was important to the Marine Corps.
"The SUSTAIN need relates directly to our service advocacy for the reinvigoration of NASAs scientific space exploration activities," his statement said. "While the core missions of the Marine Corps and NASA differ fundamentally, the technology sets they will require to accomplish their respective missions share significant commonalities."
Col. Jack Wassink, head of the Information Operations and Space Integration Branch at Marine Corps headquarters, the Corps' primary advocate of SUSTAIN, said the needs statement serves to focus some of the nation's research resources on the technological problems presented by the concept.
The director of NASA said technological advances in space travel today are roughly equivalent to that of the computer industry in the 1960s, "and I tend to believe that," Lafontant said. One purpose of the needs statement is to articulate Marine Corps requirements "and force the technology to adapt to us" rather than purchase commercial hardware and adapt it to the services needs, he said.
The main goal of SUSTAIN is to provide the capability to get above the point in space - at an altitude of 50 miles - that most countries claim as their sovereign air space. Thus, the United States would not have to ask permission to use a country's airspace, possibly tipping off foes about future operations.
Rocketing Marines around the globe is not a new concept to the Corps. In the 1960s, Gen. Wallace Greene, the 23rd commandant, envisioned combat-ready space Marines as a logical next step to the Corps' expeditionary heritage. However, when then-Marine Col. John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth in 1962, that was about as far as the idea went.
"It was a neat vision, but we were way short on technology," said Gayl.
The Marines have now positioned themselves to be key players in space. They have a component at U.S. Strategic Command, which carries the Global Strike Mission that would allow the United States, primarily through precision aerial bombing, to soften up potential foes such as North Korea or Iran and make way for further introduction of forces. SUSTAIN would significantly increase the nation's space-enabled options.
"As the Marine Corps matures these advanced capabilities in the years and decades ahead, [the Strategic Command component] will provide a transformational expeditionary capability that projects the most psychologically effective component of our traditional character, the Marine on the ground," Zilmer said in his 2003 Senate subcommittee testimony.
Greene's idea of expeditionary space Marines was all but grounded until 2000, when Congress convened a Space Commission directed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was later tapped as secretary of defense. The major outcome of the commission, as stated in its January 2001 final report, was to make space "a top national security priority."
In his statement before the Space Commission, Bedard lobbied for a more engaged space effort.
"The focused efficiency that our services have demonstrated in training, organization and equipping for operations has not been applied to national security space," he said. "Space exploitation is unfortunately a Balkanized endeavor."
For example, prior to the Space Commission, the Navy and Air Force ran programs to track space debris. The Navy's program, the Navy Fence, is now under Air Force control.
"There was a lot of unintended duplication of effort," said Gayl. "Each service was doing its own thing."
In an unprecedented move, Bedard's concerns were addressed by the commission, which made the Air Force the executive agent for space, meaning it would take ; "department-wide responsibility for planning, programming and acquisition of space systems," Gayl said.
Among the currently envisioned SUSTAIN capabilities are launch on demand, the ability to transport at least 12 mission-tailored Marines and their equipment, and stealthy insertion plus, in some scenarios, extraction of the unit.
Having an executive agent for space, SUSTAIN advocates said, will help streamline and focus all space endeavors.
"The Air Force has a larger charter," Gayl said. Rather than attend only to its traditional space missions, the Air Force now fosters "the range of expeditionary options for all the services."
Gayl cites Special Operations Command as another key player in the effort to harness space technologies to achieve expeditionary objectives. Special Operations Command has identified a space transport need very similar to SUSTAIN, he said, embodied in its "Special Operations Forces Space Enabling Concept," intended to leverage space "as a force multiplier" for special operations missions and functions in the 2015-2020 timeframe.
The Air Force and DARPA are already working on a variety of projects, all of which could serve as steppingstones toward a future SUSTAIN. The two-pronged Falcon program seeks to develop hypersonic technologies as well as small-payload-\to-space capabilities. Testing on the small payload delivery has already begun. The hypersonic technology vehicle is scheduled for testing in fiscal 2007.
Falcon's advances have rendered obsolete a previous Air Force/ DARPA joint program called RASCAL (responsive access small cargo affordable launch). RASCAL, which has been discontinued, aimed at providing reliable, reusable and affordable small-payload delivery into space.
In the 1990s, NASA successfully tested the McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper, an unmanned prototype of a reusable, single-stage-to- orbit vehicle that took off like a rocket and landed vertically. The prototype demonstrated a radical new approach to future space operations in that it could be refueled and used again with a very quick turnaround. Only three people were needed for operations, due to the Delta Clipper's advanced automation.
The project most closely resembling SUSTAIN may be Hot Eagle, a joint Air Force Research Lab/DARPA project to study a reusable upperstage space vehicle, which was first reported in Defense Technology International magazine. According to Lafontant, Hot Eagle is tailored to the Marines' needs statement.
DARPA would not comment on Hot Eagle, but a spokesman confirmed in an e-mail message to Seapower that the agency is studying the idea of second-stage reusable access to space. However, the Hot Eagle project awaits DARPAs future investment plan decisions.
The Air Force has taken a serious interest in Hot Eagle, and its reusable upper stage could be "a serious step forward" toward the creation of the insertion capability envisioned in the SUSTAIN needs statement, said Gayl.
Hot Eagle is a means to assess the challenges and technology hurdles out there, said Wassink. "We're supporting the Hot Eagle effort by talking with [the Air Force] about SUSTAIN's concept of operations and ... Operationally usable' ways to create a rapid, spacebased insertion capability for Marine forces."
Not all space efforts are being guided by the Defense Department. The private sector, spurred by the possibility of space tourism and lower launch costs, has fostered many developments that could contribute to a future SUSTAlN-like capability.
In 2004, Burt Rutan claimed the $10 million Ansari X-prize when SpaceShipOne, the first nongovernmental rocket ship, made two flights in two weeks to an altitude of more than 70 miles. SpaceShipOne, which cost about $25 million to develop, flew with a ground crew of about 12 people.
"That thing looked like an air operation, not a space operation. It's just a scaled-up version of that that would do this [SUSTAIN] mission," said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. S. Pete Worden, who served as a top space official.
The California-based SpaceX company is working on reducing the costs associated with space access "by a factor of 10" through its series of Falcon rockets, which feature reusable stages and are relatively inexpensive to launch. The first SpaceX launch is scheduled for early 2006, but it already claims launch contracts with DARPA, the Air Force and several private entities.
All of these efforts, however, are still a far cry from the capabilities outlined in the 2002 Universal Needs Statement, which envisions a vehicle that would transport the Marines to the fight and bring them back as well.
"We really set the bar high on the Universal Needs Statement," said Gayl. "We did that on purpose. You might as well set the bar high so people try real hard."
Gayl also cites last year's Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare Capabilities List, which mentions a "SUSTAIN-like capability," as possibly leading to "relevant investment in the coming years."
According to Gayl, SUSTAIN would be a key enabler of distributed operations, which empowers small tactical teams to fight independently, miles apart in the battlespace, connected by cutting- edge communications capabilities.
What a SUSTAIN craft might look like is anyone's guess, as the technologies to develop a craft that would be reliable, cost- effective and safe are far from mature.
"It would probably be 100-120 feet long," said Worden. The Marine Corps is assessing "whether you could launch and recover one of these things from a carrier, and that looks quite feasible."
Most experts agree that SUSTAINlike craft could be launched and tested within 30 years, though manned missions may be farther out.
Gayl said early SUSTAIN-like ships might be used to insert unmanned vehicles or even robots into the battlespace, getting persistent intelligence and reconnaissance sensors on potential targets.
The psychological impact of having such a technological edge over other countries would be staggering, said Lafontant. "Just the sheer fear of hearing that thing landing in your backyard would be enough to send people scrambling."
Advocates of space-enabled options for the Marine Corps maintain the capa- ' bility could bolster battlespace surveillance and reconnaissance, distributed operations and enhance the Global Strike Mission.
By MATT HILBURN, Associate Editor
Ellie
By Hilburn, Matt
RedNova
A few visionary Marines would take expeditionary warfare to new heights
Rapid Insertion
A Marine Corps vision of the future: Tactical units deployed to any spot on the globe within two hours.
* Timeline: At least 30 years.
* Hot Eagle, a DARPA/Air Force lab project, contains a glimpse of a future space vehicle.
* A Marine Corps space transport vehicle would also deliver robots to surveil the battlespace.
Think back to the Iranian hostage crisis of the late 1970s. For 444 days, the United States was rendered impotent after a mob of Iranians overran the Marine Guard and took the U.S. Embassy staff hostage.
President Jimmy Carter, who had promised during his election campaign to reverse the country's "crisis of confidence" and "national malaise," looked powerless during the long hostage crisis as Americans were reminded nightly that their countrymen were being held against their will, and there was nothing the United States could do about it.
When the U.S. military attempted to take action with a risky, two- day rescue mission involving a deadof-night desert rendezvous of a number of planes and helicopters - it ended in a disaster that cost the lives of eight service members, three of them Marines, and national pride was dealt a further blow.
If a few visionary Marines have their way, however, the United States in the future will have important new tactics to apply to a fast-breaking crisis half a world away.
Combat commanders would be able to rocket a squad of Marines to the scene of an emergency anywhere in the world within two hours. These future Marines could have combat capabilities that can now only be imagined. Yet even armed with some of todays modest nonlethal weapons, such as gooey nets, skin irritants and sound weapons, a squad of Marines could, at the very least, buy time until the U.S. military was able to mount a more significant defense of, for example, an embassy under siege. And just being able to get to a trouble spot so quickly would have a huge psychological impact on potential adversaries.
As far-fetched as such a scenario may seem, there is a small cadre of space advocates, in the private sector and military, working to make it a reality. These advocates admit that initial response from the defense community has ranged from disbelief to sardonic comments about the probable costs involved, given the technological hurdles that must be overcome and tight defense budgets with little room for costly space programs.
But the Marine Corps is serious enough to have come up with a Universal Needs Statement for such an effort, signed in 2002 by retired Lt. Gen. Emil R. Bedard, thendeputy commandant for Plans, Policies and Operations.
The needs statement - an acquisition document to alert government and industry about possible future requirements - called for a "Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion (SUSTAIN) capability" that would "transport small, mission-tailored units through space from any point on the globe to a contingency at any other point on the globe within minutes of National Command Authority to introduce such forces."
In addition to fending off would-be embassy attackers, a SUSTAIN vehicle could be used for operations similar to what was done in Afghanistan in 2001, when the U.S. military inserted special operations troops to liaise with Northern Alliance forces to better prepare them for engaging the Taliban.
The idea is being championed by two former Marines, Franz Gayl, the science and technology adviser to the Marine Corps' deputy commandant for Plans, Policy and Operations, and Roosevelt Lafontant, who now works for the Schafer Corp., a technology company with a close relationship with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
A Marine Corps needs statement has called for a "Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion (SUSTAIN) capability" that would rocket a squad of Marines to the scene of an emergency anywhere in the world within two hours. A joint Air Force Research Lab/DARPA project called hot Eagle to study a reusable upper-stage space vehicle is tailored to that needs statement.
SUSTAIN has advocates on high as well. Brig. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer, then-director, Strategy and Plans Division, Plans, Policies and Operations at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, told the Senate subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space in 2003 that the revival of NASAs space exploration activities was important to the Marine Corps.
"The SUSTAIN need relates directly to our service advocacy for the reinvigoration of NASAs scientific space exploration activities," his statement said. "While the core missions of the Marine Corps and NASA differ fundamentally, the technology sets they will require to accomplish their respective missions share significant commonalities."
Col. Jack Wassink, head of the Information Operations and Space Integration Branch at Marine Corps headquarters, the Corps' primary advocate of SUSTAIN, said the needs statement serves to focus some of the nation's research resources on the technological problems presented by the concept.
The director of NASA said technological advances in space travel today are roughly equivalent to that of the computer industry in the 1960s, "and I tend to believe that," Lafontant said. One purpose of the needs statement is to articulate Marine Corps requirements "and force the technology to adapt to us" rather than purchase commercial hardware and adapt it to the services needs, he said.
The main goal of SUSTAIN is to provide the capability to get above the point in space - at an altitude of 50 miles - that most countries claim as their sovereign air space. Thus, the United States would not have to ask permission to use a country's airspace, possibly tipping off foes about future operations.
Rocketing Marines around the globe is not a new concept to the Corps. In the 1960s, Gen. Wallace Greene, the 23rd commandant, envisioned combat-ready space Marines as a logical next step to the Corps' expeditionary heritage. However, when then-Marine Col. John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth in 1962, that was about as far as the idea went.
"It was a neat vision, but we were way short on technology," said Gayl.
The Marines have now positioned themselves to be key players in space. They have a component at U.S. Strategic Command, which carries the Global Strike Mission that would allow the United States, primarily through precision aerial bombing, to soften up potential foes such as North Korea or Iran and make way for further introduction of forces. SUSTAIN would significantly increase the nation's space-enabled options.
"As the Marine Corps matures these advanced capabilities in the years and decades ahead, [the Strategic Command component] will provide a transformational expeditionary capability that projects the most psychologically effective component of our traditional character, the Marine on the ground," Zilmer said in his 2003 Senate subcommittee testimony.
Greene's idea of expeditionary space Marines was all but grounded until 2000, when Congress convened a Space Commission directed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was later tapped as secretary of defense. The major outcome of the commission, as stated in its January 2001 final report, was to make space "a top national security priority."
In his statement before the Space Commission, Bedard lobbied for a more engaged space effort.
"The focused efficiency that our services have demonstrated in training, organization and equipping for operations has not been applied to national security space," he said. "Space exploitation is unfortunately a Balkanized endeavor."
For example, prior to the Space Commission, the Navy and Air Force ran programs to track space debris. The Navy's program, the Navy Fence, is now under Air Force control.
"There was a lot of unintended duplication of effort," said Gayl. "Each service was doing its own thing."
In an unprecedented move, Bedard's concerns were addressed by the commission, which made the Air Force the executive agent for space, meaning it would take ; "department-wide responsibility for planning, programming and acquisition of space systems," Gayl said.
Among the currently envisioned SUSTAIN capabilities are launch on demand, the ability to transport at least 12 mission-tailored Marines and their equipment, and stealthy insertion plus, in some scenarios, extraction of the unit.
Having an executive agent for space, SUSTAIN advocates said, will help streamline and focus all space endeavors.
"The Air Force has a larger charter," Gayl said. Rather than attend only to its traditional space missions, the Air Force now fosters "the range of expeditionary options for all the services."
Gayl cites Special Operations Command as another key player in the effort to harness space technologies to achieve expeditionary objectives. Special Operations Command has identified a space transport need very similar to SUSTAIN, he said, embodied in its "Special Operations Forces Space Enabling Concept," intended to leverage space "as a force multiplier" for special operations missions and functions in the 2015-2020 timeframe.
The Air Force and DARPA are already working on a variety of projects, all of which could serve as steppingstones toward a future SUSTAIN. The two-pronged Falcon program seeks to develop hypersonic technologies as well as small-payload-\to-space capabilities. Testing on the small payload delivery has already begun. The hypersonic technology vehicle is scheduled for testing in fiscal 2007.
Falcon's advances have rendered obsolete a previous Air Force/ DARPA joint program called RASCAL (responsive access small cargo affordable launch). RASCAL, which has been discontinued, aimed at providing reliable, reusable and affordable small-payload delivery into space.
In the 1990s, NASA successfully tested the McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper, an unmanned prototype of a reusable, single-stage-to- orbit vehicle that took off like a rocket and landed vertically. The prototype demonstrated a radical new approach to future space operations in that it could be refueled and used again with a very quick turnaround. Only three people were needed for operations, due to the Delta Clipper's advanced automation.
The project most closely resembling SUSTAIN may be Hot Eagle, a joint Air Force Research Lab/DARPA project to study a reusable upperstage space vehicle, which was first reported in Defense Technology International magazine. According to Lafontant, Hot Eagle is tailored to the Marines' needs statement.
DARPA would not comment on Hot Eagle, but a spokesman confirmed in an e-mail message to Seapower that the agency is studying the idea of second-stage reusable access to space. However, the Hot Eagle project awaits DARPAs future investment plan decisions.
The Air Force has taken a serious interest in Hot Eagle, and its reusable upper stage could be "a serious step forward" toward the creation of the insertion capability envisioned in the SUSTAIN needs statement, said Gayl.
Hot Eagle is a means to assess the challenges and technology hurdles out there, said Wassink. "We're supporting the Hot Eagle effort by talking with [the Air Force] about SUSTAIN's concept of operations and ... Operationally usable' ways to create a rapid, spacebased insertion capability for Marine forces."
Not all space efforts are being guided by the Defense Department. The private sector, spurred by the possibility of space tourism and lower launch costs, has fostered many developments that could contribute to a future SUSTAlN-like capability.
In 2004, Burt Rutan claimed the $10 million Ansari X-prize when SpaceShipOne, the first nongovernmental rocket ship, made two flights in two weeks to an altitude of more than 70 miles. SpaceShipOne, which cost about $25 million to develop, flew with a ground crew of about 12 people.
"That thing looked like an air operation, not a space operation. It's just a scaled-up version of that that would do this [SUSTAIN] mission," said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. S. Pete Worden, who served as a top space official.
The California-based SpaceX company is working on reducing the costs associated with space access "by a factor of 10" through its series of Falcon rockets, which feature reusable stages and are relatively inexpensive to launch. The first SpaceX launch is scheduled for early 2006, but it already claims launch contracts with DARPA, the Air Force and several private entities.
All of these efforts, however, are still a far cry from the capabilities outlined in the 2002 Universal Needs Statement, which envisions a vehicle that would transport the Marines to the fight and bring them back as well.
"We really set the bar high on the Universal Needs Statement," said Gayl. "We did that on purpose. You might as well set the bar high so people try real hard."
Gayl also cites last year's Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare Capabilities List, which mentions a "SUSTAIN-like capability," as possibly leading to "relevant investment in the coming years."
According to Gayl, SUSTAIN would be a key enabler of distributed operations, which empowers small tactical teams to fight independently, miles apart in the battlespace, connected by cutting- edge communications capabilities.
What a SUSTAIN craft might look like is anyone's guess, as the technologies to develop a craft that would be reliable, cost- effective and safe are far from mature.
"It would probably be 100-120 feet long," said Worden. The Marine Corps is assessing "whether you could launch and recover one of these things from a carrier, and that looks quite feasible."
Most experts agree that SUSTAINlike craft could be launched and tested within 30 years, though manned missions may be farther out.
Gayl said early SUSTAIN-like ships might be used to insert unmanned vehicles or even robots into the battlespace, getting persistent intelligence and reconnaissance sensors on potential targets.
The psychological impact of having such a technological edge over other countries would be staggering, said Lafontant. "Just the sheer fear of hearing that thing landing in your backyard would be enough to send people scrambling."
Advocates of space-enabled options for the Marine Corps maintain the capa- ' bility could bolster battlespace surveillance and reconnaissance, distributed operations and enhance the Global Strike Mission.
By MATT HILBURN, Associate Editor
Ellie