Space Force eyes SpaceX’s Starship for future rocket cargo delivery missions

The Space Force is keeping tabs on test flights for SpaceX’s new Starship megarocket, in anticipation that the super heavy-lift launch vehicle could be used by the Defense Department to send military supplies from one point on Earth to another.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman observed the Starship’s sixth test flight from the company’s Starbase facility in Texas on Tuesday, with SpaceX founder Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump also in attendance. The 400-foot-tall reusable launch vehicle comprises SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft, giving it much larger payload capacity than any other rocket available today.

Although the launch vehicle’s development is critical for NASA’s plans to resume missions on the moon and exploration of Mars, the Space Force is also tracking Starship for military applications — notably for logistics missions, Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, commander of Space Systems Command (SSC), told reporters Thursday.

“We are thinking about how we might use it. We think the first, most logical, given the payload volume, … would be some type of rocket cargo delivery mechanism,” Garrant said during a roundtable hosted by the Defense Writers Group. “[We are] absolutely interested in the potential military utility and definitely following their progress.”

The Space Force recently took the helm of the Air Force Research Lab’s experimental Rocket Cargo Vanguard program, renaming the effort Point-to-Point Delivery (P2PD). The concept seeks to use commercially available rockets to quickly launch military supplies to anywhere on Earth, including non-traditional landing pads both near structures and in remote locations.

In its budget request for fiscal 2025, the service asked for $4 million dollars to “support the detailed engineering design necessary for a P2PD service provider to perform airdrop payload delivery,” with the goal to support U.S. Transportation Command’s resupply missions, according to justification documents.

Garrant also pointed to the rocket’s potential to launch a large number of satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO) — where both the government and commercial space industry are expected to put massive constellations of hundreds of platforms — as a “game changer.” In other cases, Starship could put multiple satellites in LEO to allow other orbital transfer vehicles to carry them to other locations in space.

He added that SpaceX has not approached the Space Force to discuss certifying Starship for future national security missions, but emphasized certification isn’t off the table.