“Real-time tasking and receiving data is going to b the future,” Capella CEO Payam Banazadeh says. “Over time every single remote sensing company will go this direction.” 

Japan plans to host an American Space Situational Awareness (SSA) sensor payload on their QZSS satellites. American and Japanese officials are expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding by the end of the year.

Wallis Laughrey, Raytheon Vice President for Space and Airborne Systems, says it is possible that the Air Force will keep both Raytheon and Northrop Grumman as Next-Gen OPIR GEO payload providers “if funding is available.”

He discusses the elements that have made the company one of the world’s most successful mid-tier defense electronics firms, providing the U.S. military and others with decades worth of innovative, mission-critical technology and capabilities. 

The Navy and Marine Corps are trying to buy new autonomous and unmanned systems more quickly for expeditionary ops, but as one general warned, “if I can’t sustain it, I’m hosed.”

Other companies build planes. Other companies build helicopters. Bell’s “secret sauce,” its CEO says, is its aircraft can be both.

The Navy has eight four-stars in its ranks — a number that will stay steady when presumptive CNO Gilday is confirmed and gets his fourth star, and current CNO John Richardson steps down. The Air Force, by contrast has 13 four-star generals.

“New START was flawed from the beginning,” National Security Adviser John Bolton said Tuesday. “It is due to expire in February 2021 and while no decision has been made, it is unlikely to be extended. We need to focus on something better. And we will.”

The joint venture on the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor between Raytheon and the Japanese defense industry could point the way for international defense cooperation in the future.

As Mark Lewis, an expert on hypersonics at the Institute for Defense Analyses, said here at the NDIA conference: “You can’t walk more than 10 feet in the Pentagon without hearing the word hypersonics.”