Mechanical fixes kept the SB>1 compound helicopter grounded for weeks this summer, but Sikorsky insists they can catch up.

The hard part is no longer the technology to fly at more than Mach 5: It’s putting together all the parts to build hypersonic missiles in bulk.

These are huge strategic challenges — and Ryan McCarthy is emphasizing them more than any of his predecessors in at least a decade.

Sikorsky says their Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft design will fly faster, with bigger weapons, than archrival Bell’s. Bell says theirs will be cheaper and more reliable.

Industry’s prototype Robotic Combat Vehicles are proving more capable than the Army expected, Brig. Gen. Richard Ross Coffman told me: “It is really exciting.”

But building a global 3D terrain database will require wrangling huge amounts of data, Maj. Gen. Maria Gervais told us.

“The last few years have been quite good for the association’s annual meeting and for the Army,” the AUSA president told us, but “I’m very, very worried” about the 2020 budget.

With its trademark tiltrotors too big for the Army’s FARA requirement, Bell is squeezing every ounce of performance out of a helicopter. Will it be fast enough?

With 10 major programs ramping up from prototypes to mass production by 2026, the Army can’t just count on “Night Court” cuts to free up sufficient funds, warned the service’s three-star chief of budget planning.

A week from today, the first combat unit will get new ENVG-B goggles, which combine binocular night vision with computer-assisted cross-hairs linked wirelessly to the rifle. It’s a test case for the Army’s new high-speed approach to modernization.