Elon Musk’s vision for a Mars capable spaceship could give the United States the ability to almost instantaneously create and reinforce a whole combat theater anywhere on Earth. But
how can the cost of spaceflight possibly compare favorably to traditional Earth-based transportation?
Wars are often won by those who can move the fastest, supply the best, and sustain their forces longest. A conflict in Taiwan or the Baltics could see adversaries complete their objectives before the U.S. military can even begin meaningful counter-operations.
Starship negates all these timelines. Instead of waiting days or weeks for military assets to arrive by conventional means, forces could be on the ground on the same day as an invasion. No need for prepositioned stockpiles, forward operating bases, or painfully slow sealift capabilities. Those days are over.
In a Taiwan crisis, Starship could land American armor and mechanized infantry before the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) finishes crossing the Strait. It would change the strategic calculus entirely. Every U.S. war game predicting Taiwan’s fall under a rapid Chinese assault assumes conventional response times. Starship forces a complete rethink, for both sides. It will allow American forces to arrive in time to fight the decisive battle, not the delayed counter-offensive.
In the Middle East, Starship would allow the U.S. to surge forces only when necessary. This removes vulnerabilities associated with maintaining exposed regional bases, which are constantly under threat from drone strikes, missile barrages, and local unrest. The ability to drop a full combat force onto any battlefield from U.S. soil drastically reduces the risks associated with regional basing and offers a level of strategic flexibility unseen in military history.
In some future NATO-Russia conflict, the U.S. could project power into Eastern Europe at speeds that make conventional force movements obsolete. One of Russia’s biggest strengths is its ability to rapidly deploy forces near its borders using rail, ground, and prepositioned logistics hubs. The U.S. and its allies, by contrast, require weeks to build up forces and move heavy equipment across the Atlantic. Starship eliminates this disadvantage. If conflict erupts in the Baltics, the U.S. wouldn’t have to rely on contested European supply lines — it could drop entire brigades straight into Poland, Lithuania, or Estonia before Russia’s initial assault gains traction.
But logistics is the lifeblood of war, and Starship would make resupply and sustainment a continuous, high-speed operation. Instead of waiting weeks for sealift convoys, a division operating overseas could be resupplied from the U.S. mainland in real-time. Ammunition, fuel, medical supplies — whatever is needed — delivered from American soil directly to the battlefield in under an hour.
This breaks every existing logistical paradigm. A commander in the field wouldn’t have to ration ammunition and supplies based on what can be transported safely through contested territory. Instead, high-tempo operations could be sustained indefinitely, with real-time resupply ensuring maximum combat effectiveness. If an armored unit in Eastern Europe needs immediate replenishment of anti-tank munitions, they won’t have to wait for overland convoys vulnerable to interdiction. A Starship could land behind friendly lines and deliver everything required within minutes.
The days of vulnerable supply chains stretching across hostile terrain would be over. The entire military supply model would shift from slow and predictable routes to a dynamic, unpredictable, and unassailable network of suborbital resupply. This would make the U.S. military infinitely more agile than any adversary on Earth. Starship transforms logistics from a constraint into an overwhelming advantage.
Does the Math Work? Yes.
What we want to be able to transport and sustain is one U.S. division. Most of you are old enough to remember the 2003 Iraq War. You will recall that America destroyed the entire Iraqi Army — fourth largest in the world at the time — and overran the entire country in just three weeks.
What overwhelming force accomplished this? The 3rd Infantry Division. That’s all. (Yes, we wanted the 4th ID to invade from the north, but at the last minute our “ally” Turkey balked, so we went ahead with only the 3rd. Worked out just fine.)
This is why I’ve focused on transport capacity sufficient to deploy and sustain a division. A single American division is one of the most lethal forces on Earth, more than capable of conducting an entire war (with air support, of course).
The SpaceX Starfactory is designed to build a Starship a day. A fleet of 1,000 Starships could thus be constructed in about three years. Current Starship is designed to lift 100 tons, but Elon has said that he intends to increase that number to 200. That’s a combined 200,000 tons of payload.
As to cost, Musk’s math suggests a per-launch operational cost of $700,000 once the system reaches economies of scale. But let’s say $2 million is our high-end estimate. To fly a fleet of 1,000 Starships would cost between $700 million and $2 billion per sortie.
Now let’s look at what we’re up against, and what we’re competing with.
The total weight of a modern U.S. armored division (more accurately these days a heavy mechanized infantry division) is roughly 155,000 tons. All estimates here are approximate, but it breaks down as follows:
Therefore:
1. A U.S. armored division requires approximately 155,000 tons of transport capacity for full deployment, well within the 200,000 ton payload for our fleet of Starships.
2. Fuel alone is the largest logistical burden (~68,000 tons for 30 days), making sustainment a major challenge, and delays potentially catastrophic.
3. Personnel weight is minor compared to equipment (~4,250 tons for 17,000 soldiers).
4. Deployment by air is currently impractical: this amount of weight requires 30–40 large cargo ships or 100+ trains for domestic movement.
So, what does it cost to transport all of this?
As you can see, at our hoped-for $700,000 per flight estimate, a fleet of Starships could easily transport all of this and more within this cost range: in fact, simply to move the 155,000 tons specified would require just 775 Starships, with a per-sortie cost of $542,500,000, likely representing an enormous actual cost savings over the current supply chain.
However, let’s take our upper estimate of $2 million per launch, $2 billion per sortie. What do you think the Pentagon would be willing to pay to deploy an entire division anywhere on Earth in under an hour? It’s like asking whether you’d prefer to travel to San Francisco by Star Trek transporter or on foot. There’s simply no comparison.
Oh, and don’t forget: NASA spends $4.5 billion to launch just one SLS, just one time.
It’s also worth noting that no one is within a generation of developing anything equivalent to Starship; and even if they closed the gap, the costs of projecting this kind of power are prohibitive for all but a handful of countries. None of them will want to mess with America.
What I’m describing to you is a recipe for a new American Century. And this is just one relatively minor application of what’s to come.
Tomorrow: Part 3: Other Strategic Advantages of Mass-Deployed Starships
Click here for Military Starship: How SpaceX Is About to Make America Globally Dominant (Part 1 of 3)
This series appears through the generous permission of author Rod D. Martin, J.D., the Founder and CEO, Martin Capital, Inc. and The Martin Organization. A futurist and tech entrepreneur Mr. Martin is a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Security Policy and Board Chairman of the Institute for the American Future. His must-read Substack is https://substack.com/profile/25492130-rod-d-martin .
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