Episode Details

What if space became a parking lot for munitions? Michael Hochberg, founder and president of Paraplus LLC, joins the show to make the case for pre-positioning military supplies in low Earth orbit. Drawing on his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, he argues that reusable heavy-lift rockets like SpaceX’s Starship could let the U.S. deorbit munitions, drones, and other cargo anywhere on the globe within minutes to a couple of hours, without relying on foreign bases that host nations may close off at a critical moment.

The conversation covers how the idea compares in cost and speed to bombers, ballistic missiles, and Tomahawks; the engineering of reentry and precision targeting; the vulnerability of orbital assets to anti-satellite weapons and the risk of Kessler syndrome; why Hochberg is skeptical that the Outer Space Treaty or any future agreement with China will be enforced; and what it means to place so much strategic capability in the hands of a private company and its founder.

NatSec Tech is a product of the Special Competitive Studies Project.