Posted on 12/19/2019 4:24:41 AM PST by RoosterRedux
Recently retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast gave a lecture last month that seems to further signal that the next major battlefield will be outer space. While military leadership rattling the space sabers is nothing new, Kwast’s lecture included comments that heavily hint at the possibility that the United States military and its industry partners may have already developed next-generation technologies that have the potential to drastically change the aerospace field, and human civilization, forever. Is this mere posturing or could we actually be on the verge of making science fiction a reality?
*snip*
Kwast delivered a lecture at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C. on November 20, 2019, titled “The Urgent Need for a U.S. Space Force.” Kwast’s wide-ranging speech described the power of new technologies to revolutionize humankind, referencing the competitive advantage the discovery of fire offered to early humans and the strategic value that nuclear weapons offered 20th-century superpowers. When it comes to current revolutionary technologies, Kwast says the “the power of space will change world power forever” and that it’s up to the United States military to leverage that power...
Around the 12:00 mark in the speech, Kwast makes the somewhat bizarre claim that the U.S. currently possesses revolutionary technologies that could render current aerospace capabilities obsolete:
"The technology is on the engineering benches today. But most Americans and most members of Congress have not had time to really look deeply at what is going on here. But I’ve had the benefit of 33 years of studying and becoming friends with these scientists. This technology can be built today with technology that is not developmental to deliver any human being from any place on planet Earth to any other place in less than an hour."
(Excerpt) Read more at thedrive.com ...
Huh?
My first thought was that he couldn’t be talking about a transporter, because that would be instantaneous.
But my second thought was they were probably using a Windows-based solution, and that’s why it takes most of an hour, because it shuts down to do an update when you try to use it...
Space offers much more than that. It is the ultimate "high ground".
Good luck “up armoring” a space capsule.
Best educated guess as someone who follows science.
1. Teleportation. Yes, they have already teleported subatomic particles, and even molecules. Obviously working the way up to more complex and larger matter. What they report, is probably years behind what has been accomplished.
2. Supersonic aircraft. Supersonic aircraft utility was blocked by sonic booms for common transport. New powerplant designs and new airframe designs likely soon allow high speed launches and landings to cross the globe in under an hour. This may already be a reality.
LOL.
That would be easy.
Getting it into actual space is the hard part.
You don’t need armor if you can outrun/evade all the ordnance.
Amazon Prime. That is, if you order in the next 47 minutes...
This is why we have a new branch of the armed services, Space Corp.
Perhaps this is the tech that the navy has been hinting about over the past year.
What would this do to Boeing stock? GM?
What is the energy source?
Looks to me like the market will be doing some serious capital re-allocation over the next 10 years.
The big issues would be that deceleration, the numbers and volume and mass required for a significant number of combatants, their weapons and equipment and some reasonable sustainment.
Just sending a couple of soldiers into space and then landing them somewhere would not be particularly worthwhile. You need mass.
Exactly what I meant. What does it cost to boost a kilo of mass into space? How much does it cost to destroy what we send to space? Seems to me the risk benefit is inverted. A “space force” will be hopelessly earth bound and purely defensive, seems to me.
'Technology on the engineering benches today' and 'this technology can be built today' means to me, whatever technology he's talking about is still in the 'development' stage but he believes it can be engineered.
Is he talking 'in theory' or is he claiming the engineering theory has been proven true and CAN be engineered?
Good one! :)
Being able to deliver one guy anywhere in an hour at what cost? A $Trillion?
It’s just money.
Hypersonic. We have that technology since the 60’s and been refining it ever since. Skipping over the atmosphere like a rock skipping over water, fast and versatile.
Kwast is one of the true good guys. Smart, moral, gifted aviator. I’ve known him since the early 90”s.
LOL
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