The INSIDER daily digest -- April 18, 2018

Coverage of this week's National Space Symposium leads off this Wednesday INSIDER Daily Digest.

Some big news from this week's National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs:

Air Force to reorganize SMC, establish new office to speed up acquisition

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO -- The Air Force on Tuesday announced a major restructure to its space acquisition enterprise as well as the creation of a new office that will oversee efforts to change the way the service acquires space capabilities.

Senior U.S. defense officials this week are sounding the alarm about the hypersonic missile threat:

Hyten: U.S. must 'fight through' hypersonic test mishaps to mature conventional capabilities

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO -- The head of U.S. Strategic Command said this week he would like to see the Defense Department work more aggressively to develop and test conventional hypersonic weapons.

Griffin: U.S. forces 'under threat today' from China's hypersonic boost-glide missile

China's advances in developing a non-nuclear, hypersonic boost-glide missile are placing U.S. military forces in the Pacific region "under threat today," the Pentagon's top technology official claimed while calling for a renewed focus by the Defense Department to develop both an offensive hypersonic strike capability and a defensive capability against such ultra-fast missiles.

Army Futures Command will be based in one of 15 cities:

Fifteen cities in contention for Army Futures Command

Army senior leaders have narrowed the list of potential locations for Army Futures Command to 15 cities.

The Air Force has established the Autonomy Capability Team 3, or "ACT3," as an innovative start-up that will build the service's artificial intelligence portfolio:

New rapid development team for autonomy digs into PED algorithms, teaming

Data processing, exploitation and dissemination research will be fast-tracked by a new rapid development team at the Air Force Research Laboratory that calls itself a special-operations team for autonomy.

A recent deck-handling demonstration of General Atomics' MQ-25 Stingray is part of the Navy's concept refinement contract:

General Atomics uses Avenger aircraft as surrogate during MQ-25 demo

General Atomics performed a deck-handling demonstration of its MQ-25 Stingray offering in November using an Avenger aircraft as a surrogate and is using a Pratt & Whitney PW850 engine in its design, according to the company.

Although the formal request for proposals to replace the Navy's current TH-57 Sea Ranger has not been released, incumbent contractor Bell and Leonardo Helicopters have made decisions on their offerings:

Key players for Navy helicopter trainer replacement step forward

Industry has begun staking out places in the Navy's helicopter trainer replacement program with two companies publicly announcing their offerings last week at the Sea-Air-Space symposium in National Harbor, MD.

Huntington Ingalls Shipbuilding and Bath Iron Works were awarded contracts last year to build DDG-125 and DDG-126, respectively:

Navy completes DDG-51 Flight III design work

The Navy has completed the detail design work for Flight III of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, according to the program manager.

The head of Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command spoke at last week's Sea-Air-Space symposium:

SPAWAR's R&D network using new environment to quicken cyber acquisition

Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command recently implemented a development operations (DEVOP) environment on its research and development network in an effort to rapidly respond to cyber threats, according to an official.