peepeepoopoo105

Rapid Dragon cannibalizes our existing military transport capacity and can't achieve the same kind of economies of scale and high operational tempo that would be possible with a commercial airliner platform. Commercial airliners are designed to land, swap passengers, refuel, and take off with very little down time. Meanwhile, military aircraft are notoriously high maintenance.

This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago, but now Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than ours because of their success in civilian shipbuilding. The proposed measures in this aricle are too little too late.

The only logical course of action at this stage would be to seek an alternative that leverages the US's existing strengths. Naval vessels are largely outdated technology and meanwhile the US is the world leader in aerospace manufacturing. If we were to revive the 747 Cruise Missile Carrier concept, or else an equivalent program, it could deliver the same range and operational payload as a guided missile destroyer, but at dramatically lower cost and higher operational tempo. With the ability to rapidly ferry munitions thousands of miles to a conflict zone, one 747 CMC aircraft could replace multiple guided missile destroyers despite costing one fifth the price. This is possible because the 747 CMC is based on a reliable and proven aircraft with existing economies of scale.

Thank you for reading my shameless sales pitch.