Semper Fly: Marines in Space

Overstepping Boundaries

Finding routes through diplomatically friendly airspace and then arranging for timely delivery of U.S. forces are key complications, especially on today´s world political stage. Sustain would solve both problems in a single stroke. According to international agreement, a nation´s airspace extends 50 miles from the Earth´s surface, just short of low orbit. A spacecraft would allow the U.S. to step over other countries and insert forces where they´re needed.

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 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 expected to walk away with Osama bin Laden.

But political considerations sabotaged the mission. For weeks, the Marines had bobbed on the Indian Ocean aboard two assault ships while State Department officials negotiated with Pakistan for the right to fly through the country´s airspace. Pakistan granted access only after winning economic and military concessions that, some say, have reinforced a repressive regime. When U.S. troops finally touched down on November 25, bin Laden´s trail was cold. â€We ended up selling our soul to the devil to get through,†Lafontant says. He grew determined to find a way around that sort of diplomatic entanglement. â€What if we don´t have to have anybody´s permission?†he asked himself. â€What if we just go above and drop in?â€