[jjmarr]

I don't know why space marines aren't a thing yet. The USA could put a rapid reaction force of Tier 1 Special Forces onto a space station and deploy them through atmospheric re-entry anywhere on Earth within 30 minutes.

I can only assume "too easy to track" is part of the logic.

Ditto for kinetic strikes. That was super hyped up.

[illiac786]

The cost would be insane. And it wouldn’t be near 30min, you’d need lots of teams to reach this, driving the cost further up. Need to rotate them on a regular basis. And soldier without gravity for months at a time are definitely not fit for combat.

[jjmarr]

> The cost would be insane.

Yeah, that's why it'd be a good way for SpaceX to make money.

[laughing_man]

But it doesn't make sense for the marines. For the same money you could spin up a bunch more QRFs and scatter them over the globe.

[jjmarr]

Technically it'd make sense for Space Force, which is trying to get money for their own SOCOM unit.[1] The Marines might not be happy since they'd prefer the budget for themselves.

> For the same money you could spin up a bunch more QRFs and scatter them over the globe.

The argument Space Force could make is this would allow for higher talent density than dispersed QRFs. The same unit could also attack satellites or space stations.

[1] https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/12/space-force-specia...

[myrmidon]

The whole kinetic strike concept is 100% complete idiocy.

There is zero merit and zero gain from lobbing pole sized object at terrestrial targets, and I blame people having negative understanding of orbital dynamics for the whole concept getting popular in the first place.

Problems are:

1) You pay every single Joule of impact energy (and more!) in rocket fuel for getting the thing up there in the first place, which is an abysmal deal.

2) You can't actually "drop" anything from orbit once its there, you have to accelerate it while being trivially observable (and trackable) from earth by 30 year old radar technology.

3) You could literally do the same thing by launching purely kinetic ballistic missiles at targets. Non one ever does that for a reason-- its difficult, expensive and ineffective at the same time. Basically the only benefit is demonstrating that you could have delivered an actual nuclear payload in the same way.

[patagurbon]

Kinetic strikes sure. It seems like space marines would be incredibly easy to shoot down. They would be on a ballistic re-entry and must slow down without extreme g-forces before they reach the ground.

[euroderf]

> Ditto for kinetic strikes. That was super hyped up.

Dropping steel rods from orbit didn't seem so crazy. But I've never seen a detailed evaluation of the idea.