The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s move to launch the XS-1 spaceplane program stemmed from the need to address a national security risk posed by long lead times on space launches and challenges to launching satellites into space in a cost-effective manner, Space.com reported Wednesday.

“If it takes me 20 years to build a constellation of geosatellites to do, [for example], ballistic missile early warning, and it costs 20 billion dollars, that’s a problem,” Fred Kennedy, director of DARPA’s tactical technology office, said Oct. 12 at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in New Mexico.

“Because someone else might figure out how to put up similar capabilities or develop countermeasures in that period,” he said of the country’s potential adversaries.

DARPA teamed up with Boeing in May to build an unmanned reusable spaceplane – Phantom Express – that will work to deploy an expendable upper stage to launch a 3,000-pound satellite into orbit.

The agency expects XS-1 to have its initial flight tests by 2020 and to have a demonstration vehicle ready as early as 2019 with a goal to reduce launch costs to less than $5 million per take-off.

The spaceplane will run on an Aerojet Rocketdyne-built AR-22 engine and will work to perform up to 10 space missions in 10 days, the report added.

The U.S. Transportation Command has migrated the first batch of five information technology systems to a commercial cloud infrastructure, making Transcom the first Defense Department organization to do so.

Gen. Darren McDew, commander of Transcom, directed the cloud migration effort in a move to help the command deliver information to transportation service providers on time, update its aging electronic infrastructure and address cyber domain threats, the U.S. Air Force said Wednesday.

“This transformational move to the cloud also allows us to keep pace with industry,” said Lt. Col. John Riester, deputy chief of enterprise infrastructure portfolio and support division at Transcom’s command, control, communications and cyber systems directorate.

The project stems from a cloud-migration contract executed by Transcom’s Cloud Center of Excellence with the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental and the Army Contracting Command in May.

Herndon, Virginia-based REAN Cloud was awarded the contract to prototype a cloud-migration platform and helped the command establish an IT enclave within a government-approved cloud environment.

Transcom expects to move its remaining IT systems to the cloud by July 2018.

President Donald Trump has directed Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to launch a program that will assess and validate operations for unmanned aircraft systems alongside state and local governments in select areas.

The Transportation Department‘s UAS Integration Pilot Program will look to streamline and address challenges related to integrating drones into the national aerospace, the Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday.

FAA noted the program also aims to foster the use of unmanned technology in the economy and mitigate potential public safety and security risks.

The program can potentially open up to 100,000 jobs in the span of a decade as well as help USDOT and FAA establish a regulatory framework for low-altitude operations, determine strategies that will cater to local and national interests as well as boost communications among local, state and tribal jurisdictions, added FAA.

“This program supports the President’s commitment to foster technological innovation that will be a catalyst for ideas that have the potential to change our day-to-day lives,” said Chao.

“The program recognizes the importance of community participation in meaningful discussions about balancing local and national interests related to integrating unmanned aircraft,” noted FAA Administrator Michael Huerta.

FAA said the pilot program will assess various operational concepts such as night operations, flights over people and beyond pilots’ line of sight, package delivery, detect-and-avoid-technologies, data links between aircraft and pilots as well as counter-UAS security missions.

NASA is working with other government agencies on the development of technologies that can help build and inspect large structures in space.

The space agency said Thursday it has participated in a series of technical interchange meetings on in-space assembly as a member of the Science and Technology Partnership Forum.

The forum also includes the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, U.S. Air Force, National Reconnaissance Office and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The team has completed the first phase of the in-space assembly effort and moved to the program’s second phase, which involved a technical interchange meeting in September at NRL’s Washington facility.

Each agency discussed their plans to create in-space assembly platforms during the meeting, NASA noted.

Forum members identified the potential government and commercial applications of in-space assembly technologies, including the construction and servicing of large and modular spacecraft.

The team plans to explore interagency collaboration opportunities and work with industry and academia to gain additional knowledge, expertise and research capacity.