SDA Director Fred Kennedy steps down, amid turmoil within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin.

“My integrity and belief in SCO’s mission is more important to me than my friendship over many years with Mike (Griffin).”

“I don’t trust the Air Force, on its own, given its existing structure to properly prioritize space,” Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Adam Smith says.

“Security in space is different than security on Earth,” says Jeb Linton of IBM Watson. “If you lose command and control for even five minutes, your satellite could be completely shut down.”

From 150 down to two — that’s how intense and ruthless the competition is going to be to win the Pentagon’s nod for the small launch vehicle market.

The R3D2 spacecraft’s cutting-edge antenna is “compressed into a small volume and then blooms on orbit,” explains Northrop Grumman’s Scott Stapp.

Large networks of small, cheap satellites derived from commercial technology would be harder for China or Russia to kill than a handful of expensive, exquisite military-unique birds. But who gets to build it?

Tucson-based Vector Launch, Virgin Orbit, and a “stealth” startup can compete for prizes up to $10 million in the DARPA Launch Challenge.

“The SOF guys are less risk averse than conventional ground forces, so they’re more apt to push the limit,” said Bob Work, father of the AI-driven Third Offset Strategy. “Their commanders also have embraced AI and autonomous ops…. so I think all the conditions are set for SOF to lead the way in the more direct combat applications of AI and autonomy.”

“It’s not going to be just about , ’how do we get a lot of data?’” deputy undersecretary Lisa Porter told the House subcommittee. “It’s going to be about, how do we develop algorithms that don’t need as much data? How do we develop algorithms that we trust?”