DOD partners with SpaceX to provide military cargo delivery anywhere in the world within an hour. General Stephen Lyons, head of US Transportation Command, said that the initial tests can be expected by as early as 2021. According to We are the U.S. Government's Asia Pacific Media Hub twitter account; “Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour,” Lyons said at a National Defence Transportation Association event. “Think about that speed associated with the movement of transportation of cargo and people. There is a lot of potential here.”
The US military’s C-17 Globemaster aircraft can carry a payload of over 74,000 kilograms around the world with a speed of 590mph. The SpaceX rocket could do the same at 15 times less time and reach a speed of 7,500mph, as per the Times.
The technology also eliminates air refuelling, a necessity of present cargo aircraft.
Back in August 2018, then-Air Mobility Command boss Gen. Carlton D Everhart asked, “What happens if we preposition cargo in space? I don’t have to use terrestrial means. I don’t have to use water means. I can position it in space, have a resupply vehicle come up and come back down” and said. “I don’t have to have people there, I just have to have cargo there—automated loading, those types of things.” Space-X has already developed a Falcon 2 rocket, a reusable rocket designed to carry 22 metric tons of cargo and land vertically in a controlled descent.
