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.

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.

Let a hundred hypersonic flowers bloom, Pentagon officials say, instead of a single cumbersome mega-program.

What happens when the Pentagon’s new ballistic missile defeat program doesn’t work? They keep using the old one, which has a spotty track record.

The Pentagon has almost completed a study of how to shoot down hypersonic missiles. It’s also developing new offensive weapons — conventional, not nuclear — whose deployment will become legal with the end of the INF Treaty.

By 2021, plans call for Japan to have eight Aegis destroyers, four of them capable of launching the SM-3 Block IIA missiles, whose second successful test in a row comes as a vindication after two previous failures.

While standing up a new Space Force would likely run between $11 billion and $21 billion per year, the vast majority of that money — 96 percent — is already being spent by the Pentagon to run space operations, according to an analysis released Monday by budget expert Todd Harrison at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Japanese government is spending billions on sea and ground-based missile defenses, but all the talk in the Pentagon is on space, as the U.S. scrambles to meet new hypersonic threats from China and Russia.

“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.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin is promoting what he says are unbeatable hypersonic weapons, and Capitol Hill is listening closely. The result is hundreds of millions in new funding lines.