Attached to: USAF Counter-Terror Funds Buy "Comfort Capsules"
We're talking about high-level military executives here. Guys who have to make Really Big Decisions.
Now let's say you have one of these Generals in Washington, and they need to go to Iraq.
How do you get them there?
Do they fly commercial? Probably not very regular commercial service from DC to Baghdad.
So you fly them military.
Now, do you fly them in the jump seat of a cargo plane?
That might work for your average soldier, but do you really want the guy in command of all your forces arriving somewhere absolutely tired? Do you want to provide them with a work area for the 12-24 hours they're going to be in the air?
Regular troops have the luxary of not having to go straight from getting off the plane to directly into the battlefield. Generals are high-level decision-making executives who have to be effective all the time.
Capsules give those personnel a work-area where they can be productive on planes, and a sleep area so that when they do get wherever they're going, they're not running on a day of no or crappy sleep. There's a reason that in the commercial sector businesses pay thousands of dollars for business class seats that employees have a chance to sleep in isntead of hundreds of dollars on a coach seat. If they're flying their staff to someplace, it's important, and they don't want their staff operating on poor rest when they arrive.
So, what makes more sense: Spending millions of dollars on aircraft for moving around top military personnel, or spending tens or hundreds of thousands on some pods that can convert any standard-issue cargo plane into a flying office?
Give the guy in charge of keeping 150,000 people in Iraq alive a bed and a desk when he's got to spend 20 hours in the air. That's not a waste of money. And it sounds like building pods might actually be the least expensive way to provide those facilities.
