The goal is to give the 6,200-strong Cyber Mission Force a common, compatible set of tools so they can act in cyberspace as a coordinated military unit.

The Air Force is buying a static version of AUDS for base defense, mounted in a CONEX shipping container for ease of transport and set-up. For the Army, Northrop is proposing to integrate AUDS onto the workhorse Stryker vehicle.

Chief of Staff Mark Milley declared air and missile defense the Army’s No. 5 priority — one of the Big Six which the service is pushing to accelerate, if necessary at the expense of everything else in their budget.

Japan and South Korea are getting new generations of sub-hunting and intelligence-gathering aircraft as China, North Korea, and Russia continue to push more assets into the waters of the Pacific.

As Jon Kyl, the new senator who brings a long track record of spending on missile defense and nukes returns to the Hill, Democrats in the House might have other ideas.

“There’s a real capability that can be deployed as soon as the government says it can be,” Northrop Grumman’s Rob Jassey told me, possibly even in “months.”

Australia looking to protect its home waters, while sending a signal to Washington that it is one of the allies that is trying to pull its weight in defending itself.

General Atomics says it is launching new, heavier planes from its EMALS carrier launcher. The launches are taking place on land, and won’t be attempted on board the $13 billion Ford for some time, however.

Northrop Grumman was pushed aside today by Lockheed Martin as it picked Raytheon to build perhaps the F-35’s most important sensor, the Distributed Aperture System. “It’s a major upset,” Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group said when I asked him to discuss the decision.

The deployment comes as Beijing and Washington race to keep tabs on one another in the South China Sea.