“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.”

“We were never above probably a total of eight people,” the aviation Cross Functional Team chief, Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, told me. “We’re not this big colossal thing, we’re a lean, mean organization.”

“All of the fundamental research in hypersonic aerodynamics is United States (work),” said Pentagon R&D chief Mike Griffin. “We did not choose to weaponize the results of that research. Our adversaries have chosen to weaponize it. That’s the challenge. We will respond.”

Lockheed is as close to an incumbent as you get in the rapidly evolving world of high-energy fiber lasers. Raytheon, by contrast, only recently made a big play for laser weapons, but they can draw on their experience with lower-powered but exquisitely tuned laser sensors.

“I’ve never seen a Congress more on our side than it is today,” Griffin said. “In every meeting on the Hill, I am asked, ‘what relief do you need? What legal remedies do you require? What can we do to help you move faster?’ So if you are bound by legal impediments…I need bring those forward, because I am perfectly willing to go to Congress.”

Some 35 years after Ronald Reagan’s famous Star Wars speech, the Pentagon’s R&D chief said that space-based missile defenses are technically feasible and reasonably affordable.

So, I asked, could a sufficiently high-powered neutron beam not just detect a nuclear warhead from a distance, but actually disable it? Dent, who worked on the Safeguard missile defense system as a young Army officer and later on Reagan’s Star Wars initiative for SAIC, pondered a moment. Then he said: “Could it fry the electronics ? Yes, it could.”