Thunderbirds-style Military Planes a go | Hacker News Reader

Thunderbirds-style Military Planes a go

news.com.au

Although it's very cool technology, and I like the Thunderbirds reference, I can't really see it being especially useful. Instead of having a "crack team" of Marines ready to be deployed anywhere on Earth within four hours, why not just have a bunch of teams positioned four hours' flight from most potential trouble spots?

The comment about finding Osama Bin Laden seemed particularly odd. They really thought that the best way to respond to a report about what cave he might be in would be to load some Marines into a rocket somewhere in Alabama and blast them around the world to land in Afghanistan?

And that's without worrying about how you actually land a billion-dollar spaceplane in presumably-hostile territory without any teams on the ground yet to help. Perhaps it drops them by parachute and then finds a friendly airbase to land at?

Anyway, it definitely seems like technology looking for an application rather than vice versa. But hey, I'm fine with that.

One of the mentioned benefits was that a space-plane is well out of the reach of enemy radar. Helicopters and conventional jets give fairly large notice when they are inbound.

If the marines can purchase/configure this as a sub-orbital equivalent to the Osprey, then that's good news for everybody. Look for suborbital commercial flights within 20 years after production (anybody remember how long it took jets to go from the military to commercial sector?)

My question involves the end-state -- you've got some expensive hardware sitting on a hot LZ with no way to leave. Whatever they develop, it's going to have to have the ability to leave the LZ and return home to be worth the expense. Perhaps some kind Osprey-docking system with the Osprey taking the place of the mothership?

I don't think forward-deployment is a viable alternative, mainly due to training issues -- hard to cross-train and intensively train folks scattered all over hither and yon. There's also the fact that hardware comes out of one budget and people come out of another. For some reason it seems easier to get a new stealth bomber funded than a division of marines.

Wasn't this the same shtick used to sell DC-X in the early 90s? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X

Such a shame the SSTO funding went to that VentureStar thing instead.

Is it just me, or does a project code-named "Hot Eagle" sound like something you'd see on Bravo?

Wow. This reminds me very heavily of the tactics in Starship Troopers. (The book. Haven't seen the movie.)

you have to see the movie. It is so bad and so good at the same time. It is one of those full of cliches bad movies, which is actually really good/entertaining to watch. http://www.hulu.com/watch/37498/starship-troopers

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