Can a new kind of contract get key cutting-edge technologies across the bureaucratic “valley of death” before the Russians and Chinese lap the US?

WASHINGTON: As the Navy continues to look for ways to reach out and touch — or preferably deter — potential adversaries at greater range, it is turning to the latest version of a decades-old weapon to do it.

While Congress wrestles with CH-47 cuts, Army leaders are already looking ahead to hard decisions on high tech.

After years of tests, setbacks, and painstaking fixes, the Army has its first fire-control center for a radically new kind of missile defense.

“I think the most important bits are … about the recent Russian RPOs likely being an SSA/intelligence program and possibly supporting the new Burevestnik co-orbital program,” said Brian Weeden, technical advisor to the Secure World Foundation.

But modernizing the Army will take decades and tough decisions about everything from online propaganda to the National Guard.

To take out Russian and Chinese targets from a thousand miles away, the US Army wants two very different weapons: a hypersonic missile and a giant cannon.

All told, the Army’s investing $57 billion in modernization over five years — but it wants to take time to test new technologies before it commits to them.

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.