“This is not going to be helpful over on the Hill,” one former congressional staffer said of SDA’s $11 billion, five-year draft budget. “In fact, it could put the final nails in SDA’s coffin.”

The vision itself isn’t the only thing that is needed, industry sources say. A concept of operations is required for how the Air Force will manage different user needs and interact with different industry providers. “The vision is out, but there is no concept of operations,” said one source.

The Air Force sees the New Mexico training environment as eventually becoming a cyber training range for the entire Defense Department.

The goal of the matching fund is to support tech startup firms to bridge the ‘valley of death’ and rapidly scale up capability.

The new Advanced Aircraft PEO will “transform the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program into the Air Force’s Digital Century Series initiative.”

Gen. Stephen Lyons, the Army general heading up TRANSCOM, says there is no ongoing work for a space plane to carry supplies.

AFRL’s new Air Force Explore challenge intends to make four to seven awards, each in the $1 million to $2 million range.

“Gen. Raymond has asked me, in particular, to make sure that we are incorporating all aspects of space warfighting … into our curriculum.”

“We are the ones that say this is what needs to be done” to build a next-gen space architecture, says SDA Acting Director Derek Tournear. Except when they don’t.

Air Force LCMC is working to ensure that far-flung depots eventually can print their own parts — with a recent first being Travis AFB’s using their brand, spanking new laser printer to print those toilet seat covers built of a new-fangled polymer from it’s own brand new printer.