Marines in space!

Space Marines? Interesting idea … needs a lot of work.

Consider:

- Feasibility. The Marines have had a hard time getting the V-22 Osprey to work right. And now they’re already talking about spaceships? If I were a Pentagon planner or budget director, I’d be saying, “Aw, C’mon!” to such a notion. Very tough sell.

- Cost. Even if the program were feasible, and even if there are no cost overruns (in a defense department program? Yeah, sure), it’d be billions of dollars for the acquisition and maintenance of the space delivery vehicles and their mother ships; millions if not billions more for the extensive crew and troop training required to use them effectively. This alone would likely kill the program at the concept stage (see “Priorities” below).

- Scale. Related to cost. Examples: (1) The Air Force is already having to downsize personnel to afford more F-22 Raptors and F-35 Lightning IIs, and even then is still going to have to scale back on the original number planned for purchase. (2) Congress is already cutting back on the number of Marine Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles to be authorized, due to cost considerations. If the same happens to the space delivery vehicle program, we’d likely end up with a (potentially) highly capable system that’s too few in numbers to make a major difference and so costly per unit that we’d be loath to risk losing them in combat (e.g., ask the Navy how enthusiastic they’d be about sending their aircraft carriers into a high-risk scenario of being sunk, you’ll get the idea).

- Tactics and Logistics. OK, so you’ve dropped the space marines into hostile territory where they otherwise couldn’t get to by conventional sea or air delivery. Now what? How do you keep them supplied for anything more than a quick hit-and-run mission? If we could, for example, supply the space marines by air, then why not use paratroopers like the 82nd Airborne Division to begin with? How do you get them back out again, if the delivery vehicles require a “mother ship” to get them aloft to begin with? Also, considering alternatives to the cost to deliver a handful of men in this fashion, what about developing a sub-orbital, pulse-jet equipped version of a stealth bomber to undertake the same mission – for less money? We could probably make an umanned vehicle to do such work, so there’d be no need to risk scarce, highly-trained and hard-to-replace personnel on extremely distant and dangerous missions into hostile territory.

- Lack of political will. Related to scale. Employing space marines in this fashion would only be practical in the context of a major war, in which we’d be using some kind of large-scale follow-on force to relieve or retrieve them. Fighting our way into and out of a hostile location so remote that we can only get there from space to begin with would be a massive undertaking, with likely high casualties on both sides. Maybe justifiable in a fight-for-survival war with say, the Russians or Chinese – maybe. Anything short of that? No way the America public would put up with the dollar and human cost involved.

- Priorities. Even though we spend a lot on defense, the budget isn’t unlimited. Invest billions of dollars into a “silver bullet” (if not “white elephant”) program like space marines (which, like nuclear ballistic missile submarines, will likely never be used) and other programs will have to suffer. Could the money be better spent in more conventional troops, more and better vehicles, aircraft and ships? Enhancing our low-level/counterinsurgency warfighting capabilities (a scenario much more likely than anything requiring space delivery)?

Sorry for the long post, but these are just the big question marks that come to mind on cursory examination of the concept, from somebody who doesn’t consider himself an expert on the matter. It sure sounds sexy, but – to borrow a related expression – “It’ll never fly.”

Spurius Ligustinus on December 18, 2006 at 5:26 PM