Hypersonic Equipage From TEUs (HEFT)

The introduction of air transport of supplies and equipment in World War II ushered in a new era of military logistics. Troops could be resupplied in a matter of days, versus weeks or months waiting for cargo to be delivered by sea. However, air cargo is still not fast enough for some logistical needs. Further, even with the speed of air transport, delivery of forward logistics face severe “final mile” challenges. A fully loaded C-17 requires as much as 6,900?feet to land and 8,200?feet to take off, and infrastructure – including airports – may be severely lacking in some theaters or disaster areas. As such, AFRL announced Rocket Cargo, a fourth “vanguard” program in 2021. The Rocket Cargo program is focused on leveraging commercial rocket capabilities for rapid delivery of DoD materials across the globe. As currently envisioned, the program would leverage reusable rockets that can perform propulsive landings for all-terrain, point-to-point delivery of a C-17’s worth of cargo in one hour. Rocket-based logistics would usher in a new era of forward supply. It would dramatically improve delivery times and not require overflight permissions. But it would still be relatively expensive and lacks stealth as rocket launches require 24-hour notification to the international community and can easily be tracked. Castelion’s Hypersonic Equipage From TEUs (HEFT) concept improves the value of each launch by ejecting a portion of the payload, on the order of 500?pounds, from the rocket platform and transporting it via a hypersonic vehicle to a final destination different than the planned landing site and a significant lateral distance from the host ground track. The Direct-to-Phase-II (D2P2) effort would create a detailed design of a prototype system and build a full-scale engineering model, as well as provide detailed cost models of the envisioned operational system and determine the number of cargo delivery vehicles that could fit into a standard twenty (foot) equivalent unit (TEU) container. The Phase III effort would build an operational prototype, capable of being launched from the Rocket Cargo platform.