Suborbital rockets are needed for various purposes such as testing equipment, observing the Earth’s surface, atmosphere, and outer space, and defense missions which utilize advanced unmanned aerial/space vehicles for rapid sensor deployment for surveillance and reconnaissance missions. A defense need for such rockets could arise if a satellite constellation over a particular region of interest is disarmed by an adversary. In this case, a swarm of such rockets could launch from Earth as a rapid response and provide the same surveillance as the satellite constellation. Intel can be provided to the warfighter with minimal interruption. In such a scenario, this rocket enables deterrence. The adversary will be less inclined to attack our satellites in space if they know that we can rapidly provide the same intel through an RPS swarm of suborbital rockets. 

The RPS suborbital rocket can be deployed under a guided or unguided mission. In a guided mission, the rocket launches from Earth and ascends roughly 100 km over a region of interest (such as an adversarial nuclear weapon sites), perform surveillance and gather intel, and then land back down in a region near the original launch location or other predetermined location. An unguided mission would proceed similarly to the guided case, only there would not be a need to recover the rocket. This would be useful in situations where the geography of the region is unconducive to recovery.