David Spain wrote:

“The persistent judgment is that we don’t need it. It’s been discussed in
viewgraph land: physically possible, but not militarily useful. Military
planning is no longer threat-driven, but technology-driven. Previously, the
question was ‘What problem will this solve?’ Now, it’s ‘Isn’t this
astonishing?’ The idea is to astonish them.

I like the SUSTAIN; we drop these thirteen Marines out of outer space
into the middle of some hellhole, let them do their stuff*, and then
extract them somehow later.
Just what we need - the space equivalent of Operation Market Garden.
And it seems the concept was still alive as of April of last year:
http://www.aiaa.org/tc/sos/ws2009/Re...enta tion.pdf

* Why do I get the feeling that that "stuff" somehow involves a backpack
nuke?

Pat