The Pentagon's innovation unit wants an operational space cargo solution "within 2 years"

Pursuant to Marine Corps EOBA doctrine, the Pentagon's innovation unit has launched a call for projects to implement a space freight solution in order to project equipment and materials anywhere on the planet in the short term.

With the multiplication of theaters of potential engagement, and the emergence of first-rate armed forces representing major potential adversaries for the American armies, logistics, and more generally the capacity for the rapid deployment of men and freight, have become critical issues for the Pentagon.

Indeed, the strategy used until then, especially during the Cold War, consisting in prepositioning a large stock of equipment and sometimes of men near the probable engagement areas, has now become both very expensive because material costs, and very complex to implement because HR constraints imposed on the US Armies as on all Western armies.

The combination of these constraints and the multiplication of probable theaters of engagement led the Pentagon to want to acquire new means of force projection and logistical flows, so as to keep most of the forces in the United States while maintaining short-term response resources wherever necessary.

Thus, several programs have been launched in recent years in this area, such as the design of a logistics transport ekranoplane called Liberty Lifter, a reference to the Liberty ships of World War II, entrusted to General Atomics by DARPA.

In the same area, and again to meet the specific needs of the Pacific theater facing China, the US Marines Corps has undertaken thea Light Amphibious Warship light projection building design, wanting to be the pivot of the new EOBA doctrine of distributed engagement, so as to project and support from the logistical point of view small marine infantry units in the Pacific archipelagos.

But the most ambitious initiative, and undoubtedly the most innovative, is none other than the Rocket Cargo program, overseen by the Pentagon's innovation unit since 2018, and which has just taken a decisive new step with the publication of a solicitation of commercial offers from the major American space transport operators, such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, VOX Space and Rocket Lab USA.

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