“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.”

“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.

The Space & Missile Systems Center’s Space Enterprise Consortium has been so successful at providing competitive prototypes, fast, that SMC wants to expand its scope dramatically.

Senate Republicans and Democrats remain far apart on using DoD money for the border wall — so far that the government might not gets its 2020 budget on time,

DoD goes back to the drawing board to replace its missile interceptors. Can they make it work this time?

When new entities fail, it’s most often due to the fact they don’t do what they do better than their competition (differentiated value proposition is the business term) and they lack investment in talent and technology. But there are other challenges.

The potential threat from Chinese batteries will only grow as Beijing continues to militarize small islands outside of its territorial waters, claiming them as their own.

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.”

The Trump Administration argues the HASC’s cuts to the defense policy bill would hamper missile detection and defense priorities.

The RFI explains that SDA is looking to potential contractors to supply “concepts for rapid prototyping, risk-reduction efforts that could be demonstrated in less than 18 months” that link to its proposed architecture.