As any battlefield commander will tell you, getting troops to the fight can be as difficult as winning it. And for modern-day soldiers, the sites of conflict are so far-flung, and the political considerations of even flying over another country so complicated, that rapid entry has become nearly impossible. If a group of Marine Corps visionaries have their way, however, 30 years from now, Marines could touch down anywhere on the globe in less than two hours, without needing to negotiate passage through foreign airspace. The breathtaking efficiency of such a delivery system could change forever the way the U.S. does battle.

   The proposal, part of the Corps' push toward greater speed and flexibility, is called Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion, or Sustain. Using a suborbital transport-that is, a vehicle that flies into space to achieve high travel speeds but doesn't actually enter orbit-the Corps will be able, in effect, to instantaneously deliver Marine squads anywhere on Earth. The effort is led by Roosevelt Lafontant, a former Marine lieutenant colonel now employed by the Schafer Corporation, a military-technology consulting firm working with the Marines. Insertion from space, Lafontant explains, makes it possible for the Marines-typically the first military branch called on for emergency missions-to avoid all the usual complications that can delay or end key missions. No waiting for permission from an allied nation, no dangerous rendezvous in the desert, no slow helicopter flights over mountainous terrain. Instead, Marines could someday have an unmatched element of surprise, allowing them to do everything from reinforce Special Operations Forces to rescuing hostages thousands of miles away.

   Sustain is simply an ability to move Marines very rapidly from one place to another, says Marine colonel Jack Wassink, director of the Corps' Space Integration Branch in Arlington, Virginia, where the program is based. Space lends itself to that role.

   The program is quickly gaining traction. Congress has expressed interest, because of the obvious usefulness of the capability it promises. And the technologies necessary to make it happen, from hypersonic propulsion systems to new composite materials needed to make the vehicle lightweight yet strong, are in advanced development in military labs across the country. The Marines expect to fly a prototype in 15 years, most likely a two-stage system using a carrier aircraft that will launch a lander into orbit from high altitude. Production models could show up around 2030, a date that isn't quite as far away as it seems. Consider that the F-22 Raptor fighter is now entering service after 22 years of development.

   Each Sustain lander is intended to hold a squad of 13 Marines. Mounted on wedge-shaped carrier aircraft, the lander would detach, climb, and accelerate with scramjet engines to 100,000 feet and then fire rocket engines to get above 50 miles, following an arc over hostile countries. Composite shields would absorb or deflect the searing heat of reentry as the vehicles angle for the landing zone.

   Lafontant arrived at this Space Marines vision after years of analyzing military space needs. A 44-year-old Queens, New York, native who joined the Corps in 1984 as an infantry officer and progressed through Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he studied space systems operations and joined the small fraternity of Marine Space Operations Officers. In 2001 he took a job in the Pentagon working for the National Reconnaissance Office. He was serving as liaison to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in November 2001 when the Marine Corps launched its deepest air assault ever.

   Five hundred Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) prepared to fly 441 miles through the mountains of northern Pakistan in CH-53E Sea Stallion helicopters to capture an airstrip near Kandahar, Afghanistan. It was to be the beginning of the first large offensive against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. If all went well, the Marines were expected to be a linch-pin in cornering Osama bin Laden.

   Together, Lafontant and Gayl formally presented their concept to Gayl's boss at the Pentagon, brigadier general Richard Zilmer, and then to lieutenant general Emil Bedard, the office's deputy commandant, who endorsed it on July 22, 2002, adding space transport to the Marines' official wish list. But the technology-reusable and advanced propulsion, sophisticated heat shielding-wasn´t ready. Just a year earlier, two joint NASA and Air Force programs to develop similar reusable launch vehicles, or RLVs, had been canceled because of problems with their single-stage engines. The idea was far ahead of the technological curve.

   But Lafontant was patient. He continued to refine and promote the space-transport idea until it was a fixture in the collective imagination of the Marines' space community. Soon Sustain found a home at the Corps' Space Integration Branch in Virginia, where Wassink directs a 100-person team of satellite technicians who connect Marine commanders to operations around the world. Wassink was interested in the Sustain project, but the Marine Corps is a small force under the umbrella of the Navy and receives just 4 percent of military funding. Sustain is certainly not something the Marine Corps would be able to acquire on its own, he admits.

   Zilmer agreed and introduced the Sustain concept to Congress. In an address to a Senate committee in July 2003, he outlined the Marine strategy. We must coordinate and synthesize our technology needs with other Department of Defense and nonmilitary users, Zilmer told the committee. He mentioned NASA as a possible partner. Lafontant also foresaw the Air Force developing the carrier aircraft and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon's experimental-science arm, overseeing the design of the lander. Zilmer's testimony was part of a broad campaign that Lafontant and the other Sustain advocates launched to sell the idea to Congress, NASA, the Air Force and Darpa, and to the industry partners that would build the hardware. We saw the entire gamut of reactions, Wassink recalls. Some people didn´t get past the giggle factor.

Marines into Space

   The Marines have a history of selling risky but revolutionary concepts. They embraced amphibious assault before it became a deciding factor in World War II. They guarded the versatile V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor plane during its troubled development. And they have championed their share of flops. Their vertical-takeoff AV-8B Harrier crashes more than any other contemporary fighter, and it was the Marine Corps, after all, that seriously investigated attaching incendiary bombs to thousands of bats during World War II.

   Falcon, a $100-million Air Force program intended for low-orbital operations from a runway, is the centerpiece. The first two Falcon vehicles-long, wedge-shaped craft-are under construction by a Lockheed Martin team in Palmdale, California, and are slated to begin testing in 2008.

Rough Landing

   At the core of Sustain is the lander-the actual vehicle in which a squad of 13 Marines [see photo gallery] and their gear will float through space, reenter the atmosphere, and come down right on top of their adversaries. The closest thing to a Sustain lander actually flying today is Rutan's SpaceShipOne, built by Scaled Composites in Mojave, California. In October 2004, SpaceShipOne piggybacked to 40,000 feet on a carrier aircraft and then boosted to 69 miles up with its own rocket and landed like an airplane. This singular feat, perhaps more than any other accomplishment by industry or researchers, has energized proponents of Sustain.  Just a scaled-up version of that would do this [Sustain] mission, said then Air Force general S. Pete Worden while observing the launch. A lander based on SpaceShipOne would be bigger, tougher and armed-and reconfigured for longer flights, as opposed to the up-and-down trajectory that SpaceShipOne flies-but the basic concept is broadly the same.

   Worden, who had heard one of Lafontant's early Sustain pitches, is now director of the NASA Ames Research Center in California, where he is one of Sustain's biggest allies. It was the avuncular Worden who lobbied Darpa for help with Sustain. Darpa declined to participate; these days, the agency is focused on near-term projects to support fighting in Iraq. But its position could change, Worden thinks.  If the Air Force pursues this and shows more feasibility, Darpa might be a future player, he says.

   In addition to quicker prelaunch procedures, the program needs durable, reusable heat shields in place of the space shuttle's fragile ceramic tiles, which require 60 days' preparation. And whereas two stages are a given, which combination of stages is best depends on who you ask. Even with a hypersonic Falcon first-stage craft, there are several different approaches to propulsion, says scientist James Pittman of the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.  The use of rockets to boost the vehicle to hypersonic speed is one approach. [Or] you could look at an air-breathing solution from takeoff to hypersonic speed to landing.

   Lockheed's Rattlrs program may provide key breakthroughs. This $100-million initiative is targeted at creating hypersonic missiles for the Navy, using new alloys, composites and ceramics to allow the engines to withstand extreme heat. The resulting high-speed turbine will eventually appear in RLVs, according to Lockheed's Craig Johnston.  The turbine-based combined cycle offers probably the greatest promise, he says, because it allows you to operate in the low-speed regime much the same way that current aircraft operate.