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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Starship Troopers Revolutionize Warfighting
gcanyon wrote 8 min ago:
At the same time as I am super-impressed by the progress SpaceX has
made, it scares the crap out of me that any part of the U.S. space
program depends on the whims of Elon.
gcanyon wrote 9 min ago:
> Why not instead point your Starships at their capital city?
I thought we gave up MAD as a strategy almost fifty years ago? Also, if
you're just going to do that, ICBMs are way more efficient than
Starship.
gcanyon wrote 10 min ago:
Maybe it's a distinction without a difference, but this wouldn't need
to be orbital, just suborbital. That means something like 4K less KPH,
which means less fuel needed or more weight capacity.
tw04 wrote 11 min ago:
So China and Russia attack the space-x launchpads prior to starting
whatever conflict.
The concept is great, I donât see it surviving that first âpunch to
the mouthâ.
M95D wrote 20 min ago:
The military application of Orion Project [0] was to transport an
entire army, everything included, anywhere on earth, and wipe anything
close to the landing zone as it landed there.
AFAIK, China didn't sign/ratify any nuclear non-proliferation treaties.
So there's nothing stopping them from building it, except a crash of
their exports as another cold war begins. And the new tariffs are set
up to crash their exports anyway...
[0]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsio...
rasz wrote 17 min ago:
So far lol tariffs only crashed US imports and stock exchange. US is
merely ~15% of China exports.
1oooqooq wrote 52 min ago:
starship troopers is a book about how to break young people into
Sargeants. not about supply lines. lol
roywiggins wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
Conventional Prompt Strike
URI [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_Prompt_Strike
StopDisinfo910 wrote 1 hour 36 min ago:
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 donât know if
itâs because most of America recent wars have been mostly asymmetric
or if itâs because the army propaganda needed to be insanely strong
to occult the long series of strategic losses despite the costs of the
wars but itâs kind of scary.
murderfs wrote 15 min ago:
> 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 has happened before, and we're all alive because it doesn't
really look like a nuclear strike: [1] A single rocket heading your
way is not the massive salvo of missiles that you would expect for a
counter-force attack, and a counter-value attack means that you still
have the option to retaliate.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident
Aeolun wrote 1 min ago:
Oh, thanks. You said exactly what I was going to say.
ashoeafoot wrote 49 min ago:
The world is filled with desperate young men, living in power
fantasies far away from reality.
A spaceship landing or starahip troppers it all ends swarmed by
flies(drones).
The problem is these COD operetta heroes with a death wish due to no
future voted in a warchieftain who does not deliver and they get
antsy. Game Theory didnt factor in a humanity that would be
selfdefeating in crisis mode.
Kim_Bruning wrote 1 hour 39 min ago:
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:-)
mnky9800n wrote 1 hour 45 min ago:
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.
WillAdams wrote 1 hour 52 min ago:
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)
stackskipton wrote 35 min ago:
Starship Troopers is on the reading list because of politics of the
books, not technical warfighting side. There is also interesting
passage in there about how Service Academies are insane idea since
books has chapters on officers in infantry are enlisted personnel who
go to OCS and training period with much higher washout rate.
galacticaactual wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
You have no idea what youâre talking about. An Osprey doesnât
have a âforward firing weaponâ 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
Spetsnazâ¦lol.
rbanffy wrote 1 hour 53 min ago:
Good luck not being shot down during a mostly ballistic flight.
galacticaactual wrote 1 hour 54 min ago:
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.
davidw wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
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.
enragedcacti wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
Meanwhile SpaceX is convinced that all it takes to catastrophically
destroy a Falcon 9 is a single round fired from a mile away:
URI [1]: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/05/spacex-pushed-sniper-the...
faitswulff wrote 1 hour 43 min ago:
Meh, dropping actual human troops anywhere is largely romanticized.
I'd bet on orbital drones, myself.
neilv wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
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?
Aeolun wrote 6 min ago:
Starship pretty much just falls out of they sky though. Thereâs a
lot less time to destroy one than a similar aircraft.
TMWNN wrote 41 min ago:
Cargo aircraft like the C5 Galaxy the author mentioned are also
vulnerable to antiaircraft fire, including when they approach.
joezydeco wrote 1 hour 40 min ago:
That slow moving vehicle...
cptaj wrote 1 hour 15 min ago:
Massive, shiny and slow
1oooqooq wrote 51 min ago:
well, maybe it could deliver 200k pounds of gear while carrying
100k pounds of counter measures?
but again, the original plan was always good enough for humans
dropping slowly on parachutes
jvanderbot wrote 1 hour 54 min ago:
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.
stoolpigeon wrote 2 hours 31 min ago:
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.
literalAardvark wrote 1 hour 18 min ago:
Yep. If a ballistic missile such as this one ends up aimed at Europe
logistics will be the last thing on everyone's mind.
Telemakhos wrote 1 hour 28 min ago:
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]
URI [1]: https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2015/12/Ithacus_and_SUSTA...
Coffeewine wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
I agree, that line jumped out at me. They need the chopstick
contraption, it isnât available worldwide!
pinewurst wrote 1 hour 56 min ago:
The booster needs chopsticks, but the Starship payload
(theoretically as it hasnât happened yet) does not.
ItsHarper wrote 1 hour 50 min ago:
The current version of it does, it only has catch pins, no
landing legs.
rbanffy wrote 1 hour 53 min ago:
Good luck not getting shot down during a mostly ballistic
trajectory.
nocoiner wrote 2 hours 39 min ago:
> 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?
Canât think of a single thing that could possibly go wrong with
sending a few dozen ballistic projectiles toward the enemyâs capital.
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