Spaceborne-forces planners meet with orbital joyride firms

Perhaps

This would probably work quite well for mobilising reinforcements to friendly, possibly besieged airfields quickly, rather than doing some kind of 'hot-drop' (this is all getting very sci-fi).

Hmmm....

Suborbital deployment, special suits, strap on jetwings and exotic weapons - is anyone getting shades of that old 80's cartoon series The Centurions?

Damphousse!

Gets my vote for the silliest name I've heard today.

He probably lives on a floodplain.

Heheheheh

I sincerely hope that video is a fan's quick knock up of their vision, not an official sales pitch. It's hilarious. I particularly like the way the enemybadevilforces don't even notice the things landing right next to them.

I'm not entirely clear in what situation this idea wins over the current US tactic - to fire an (unmanned, high explosive) rocket straight at the target.

And if it's a situation that human intervention is required locally, maybe they should be focussing on the (much cheaper) alternative of making friends with other people around the globe, so they don't need US Marines (tm) to handle each and every situation.

Fools, on Guard, while Prudence Burns Bridges for the Enemy.

Lewis,

And what of UKGBIrish Special Forces Operations...... Virtual Skunk Works in the CyberSpace Field of Perceptions Management?

There is certainly no reply from their Thames House link on this Wheeze although it is definitely on the Record as having been sent and therefore delivered for Registration and Reply? .....

"Per Ardua ad Astra MetaDataBase ...... A Game 42 Dare in Win Win Mode ....... Virtual FailSafe Algorithm.

And Offered Freely here to Crown Forces before ITs Venturing and Export into Vital and Viral Guerrilla Markets too ..... for Global Command and Control Systems and Levers ....... Virtual AIMachinery.

I wouldn't want Ignorance in the Field, and on Manoeuvres, to be a Proffered Defence for Missing the Boat/Plane/Action/Play/Rewards.

Please be advised that this is not to be considered Private and Personal even should it be so, for Transparency has its own Secure IntelAIgents Stealth/Virtual Cloud Cover."

Don't tell me it is Staffed at HQ with Colonel Blimp and Mustard types, who haven't a baldy notion of what is going on around them in the Bigger Picture Theatre of Operations nowadays, and therefore will never ever get a handle on how to Control IT with some Super Sub Atomic, Crazy Astute Technologies and Methodologies.

Ian Ferguson

The americans are much better at making tech than at making friends.

@ AC 14:34

I think that you'll find it's pronounced Dam-FOOSS -- it's one of those Frenchy things...

Same old problem...

This suffers the same old problem that has always plagued airborne/airmobile type troops. Namely that due to their nature, they have to be lightly armed/equipped and are therefore useless other than for quick shock actions to capture important targets along the route of advance of more conventional armored/mech troops.

If your conventional troops can't join up with them sufficiently quickly it's all over - a la Operation Market Garden.

Wot, no Burt Rutan?

And even more amazingly how the hell Virgin get the Pentagon bods to let an apparently non-American company in at this event, give its core focus is stuff for the more discrete bits of Uncle Sam's war machine.

Normally this requires setting up a US subsidiary with an all American Board. I'm not sure naturalised cuts it.

Naturally Sherman's can talk to the MoD and run their sat. comms. without any of that nonsense. Although it might be interesting if they had the same rules applied to them.

Not sure why Armadillo are showing as all their stuff has been VTOL.

Rocketplane/Kistler should also be on the list. The Rocketplane part is quite a good fit for this lark but their v. poor showing on the NASA COTS programme may have put them on the bench.

Which leaves Xcor. Who have a (small) winged vehicle, a lead rocket engine designer whose a sky diver and a Congressional Liaison who's en ex-Marine. They have also delivered hardware to government contracts under budget and under schedule, as well as being generally good for a laugh.

This will be interesting.

@Greg Trocchia.

My point exactly. Depending on how it's done militarising civilian kit has a nasty habit of being a bit harder than people expect. I'm well aware Virgin is no vehicle designer (although their marketing surveys and market size estimatinon may have driven the size choice).

Case in point. the current door design is meant to be difficult (if not impossible) to open in high altitude flight (why would you want to?). Redesign door & frame? Special door with bail out hole in? C130 rear drop ramp? Suddenly its not quite the off the peg SS2 design anymore. Scaled are no stranger to secure govt. contracts and some on site design expertise might avoid proposing something which sounds good and simple but would actually need a total re-design to make it work. Of course that is what cost+ is for (or in the military cost++)

And then it depends if their going to be sensible or play by the standard military procurement rule book. 1 page of actual specs, 250 of pointing out that you cannot use convict labour on release from the local prison (I paraphrase a description from one of the planned attendees) etc etc.

The other joker in the pack is Blue Origin. Their habit of only releasing stuff after the fact (We flew our test vehicle. It went up and down. Here is some video. That is all) might appeal to folks who dont want what they are buying to be in the WSJ, or anywhere else.

As to how far forward Bezos and Co are, who knows. It's my favourite way to go but it lacks 2 key ingredients loved of the AF side of Special Forces.

Penguin because Armadillio vehicles are powered by the Penguin