[HN Gopher] Starship Troopers Revolutionize Warfighting
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Starship Troopers Revolutionize Warfighting
Author : Michelangelo11
Score : 25 points
Date : 2025-05-17 19:19 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (perfectingequilibrium.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (perfectingequilibrium.substack.com)
| nocoiner wrote:
| > So why go meet the enemy in an hour on the frontlines of a
| battlefield they have picked?
|
| > Why not instead point your Starships at their capital city?
|
| Can't think of a single thing that could possibly go wrong with
| sending a few dozen ballistic projectiles toward the enemy's
| capital.
| stoolpigeon wrote:
| SpaceX is reusing spaceships, landing them, catching rockets in
| chopstick contraptions. But a spaceship that lands near its
| launchpad can also land anywhere in the world. In an hour. Loaded
| with military might.
|
| No - no they can't. Referencing Starship Troopers is appropriate
| because this is fiction.
| Coffeewine wrote:
| I agree, that line jumped out at me. They need the chopstick
| contraption, it isn't available worldwide!
| pinewurst wrote:
| The booster needs chopsticks, but the Starship payload
| (theoretically as it hasn't happened yet) does not.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Good luck not getting shot down during a mostly ballistic
| trajectory.
| ItsHarper wrote:
| The current version of it does, it only has catch pins, no
| landing legs.
| delichon wrote:
| A military version would have landing legs and a built in cargo
| crane. It couldn't land anywhere, only anywhere big, hard and
| flat. Those things don't seem like show stoppers.
|
| But it would seem to be a one-way trip. Even if the ship could
| physically survive a second launch, and has a tower to catch it
| at home base instead of landing on the legs that the launch
| probably destroys, how do you fill it full of cryogenic fuel in
| a militarily contested area? At least a Galaxy can take off
| again with the fuel it arrives with.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| It's an old military dream; Ithacus [0] was a 1966 concept for
| a vertical take-off, vertical landing troop transport rocket
| that could put 1200 soldiers plus materiel anywhere in the
| world in an hour. Issues that others have brought up here (like
| the vehicle being mistaken for a nuclear missile) were brought
| up then, and the obvious flaws killed the project.
|
| As [0] points out, and as I vividly recall from the antiquated
| books of my childhood, a similar concept was prominent in the
| 1979 Usborne Book of the Future. The idea of being able to put
| boots on the ground anywhere within an hour is probably still a
| military dream somewhere, although I don't think US doctrine
| has a place for that right now, since achieving air supremacy
| over the theater, a prerequisite to boots on the ground, would
| probably take longer than an hour.
|
| [0]
| https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2015/12/Ithacus_and_SUSTA...
| literalAardvark wrote:
| Yep. If a ballistic missile such as this one ends up aimed at
| Europe logistics will be the last thing on everyone's mind.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Meanwhile SpaceX is convinced that all it takes to
| catastrophically destroy a Falcon 9 is a single round fired from
| a mile away: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/05/spacex-pushed-
| sniper-t...
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I don't see why a drop ship needs to be all that sophisticated.
| A parachute and some shipping crates and send the rocket home
| from orbit, don't risk it.
| neilv wrote:
| I was about to post:
|
| > _Why would you do any of that if you could deliver 300,000
| pounds on a Starship anywhere in the world in an hour?_
|
| How much does it cost to destroy that vehicle and its 300,000
| pounds of cargo before it lands?
| joezydeco wrote:
| That _slow moving_ vehicle...
| cptaj wrote:
| Massive, shiny and slow
| faitswulff wrote:
| Meh, dropping actual human troops anywhere is largely
| romanticized. I'd bet on orbital drones, myself.
| davidw wrote:
| The Pentagon is also busy firing anyone who cares about boring
| woke things like 'logistics' in favor of manly men who can go
| head to head with Defense Secretary Whiskey Pete downing shots.
| galacticaactual wrote:
| 1/75 would not have fallen under 24th ID as even then the 75th
| was under SOCOM. That is the first of a dozen fallacies in this
| article.
|
| This person was probably in the 24th ID at one point in their
| adult life. Their credibility stops about there.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Good luck not being shot down during a mostly ballistic flight.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Interestingly, Heinlein's _Starship Troopers_ is the only book,
| other than _The Bible_ to be on the reading lists of _all_ the
| U.S. Service Academies.
|
| That said, while the Marines dream about powered armor and self-
| deploying troops, the reality is nowhere near that yet.
|
| As noted, one needs to have control of the LZ --- if that weren't
| critical, then Spec. Ops. would have actually done something with
| the idea of putting pods containing soldiers under the wings of
| Harrier jump jets, and the V-22 Osprey would have a forward-
| firing weapon --- keeping control of an airfield is hard, which
| is why AF Sec. Police train to fight against Spetsnaz and the
| U.S. had RoK Marines guarding their bases during Vietnam.
|
| What does a supply chain look like in a time of drone warfare?
| How does one control a perimeter and maintain the surface of a
| runway against an opponent which is well-equipped? (For an
| example of how critical that can be, see AF-4590)
| galacticaactual wrote:
| You have no idea what you're talking about. An Osprey doesn't
| have a "forward firing weapon" because Direct Action
| Penetrators followed by -47s from the 160th are better suited
| to such a scenario.
|
| On the topic of USAF security forces training to fight
| Spetsnaz...lol.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I would assume this would also disrupt airlines as well as
| wealthy people could jet around from London to California to
| Tokyo in ten minutes. For less than a jet.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| If you can drop a soldier or a tank in the enemy capital under an
| hour, why not go all in and drop a thermonuclear device?
|
| I'm sure no one has ever thought of that! O:-)
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| This is yet another article writing without taking into account
| the reality of the nuclear weapon.
|
| In an age where all your significant opponents have nuclear
| ICBMs, anything which could look like a nuclear strike will be
| interpreted as such by your opponent in an open conflict and
| generate direct retaliation.
|
| This is frankly weird to me how some American commentators like
| to pretend this has not been the reality for 70 years. I don't
| know if it's because most of America recent wars have been mostly
| asymmetric or if it's because the army propaganda needed to be
| insanely strong to occult the long series of strategic losses
| despite the costs of the wars but it's kind of scary.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Conventional Prompt Strike
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_Prompt_Strike
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