Now, Airbus is preparing to introduce upgraded avionics and other systems that would bring its plane’s features closer to those offered in Boeing’s upgraded 737 Max, which is slated to begin commercial flights in 2017, said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with Teal Group, a Fairfax, Virginia-based consultant. “This is something they’ve always done,” Aboulafia said in a phone interview. “Boeing tends to launch all of its big changes in one block. Airbus has more of a rolling update approach.”

"Certainly, it's a big loss for Raytheon," Marco Caceres, a senior analyst at the Teal Group, said in an e-mail. "The issue of tracking space debris will only grow substantially in importance over the next few years, as potentially thousands of new micro, nano, pico, and femto satellites will be launched to low earth orbit." He added, "The Space Fence is a billion-dollar program that will continue to grow in value for decades to come, so it would have represented a long-term revenue stream for Raytheon."

The problem is that the Space Launch System program lacks a clear mission, according to Marco Caceres, director of space studies at the Teal Group Corp., a defense industry think tank. “They’ve toyed with lassoing an asteroid and hauling it to the moon, or using it as a vehicle to take people back to the moon, but it’s not clear why” we’re funding SLS, Caceres said.

The political landscape may have changed, however, now that Russia has blocked sales of its Russian RD-180 rockets, which are used to launch U.S. defense satellites. Russia also has announced that it plans to end its operations on the ISS in 2020, effectively disabling the station. “There’s a good chance that SLS will be developed and built, mainly because politically it just looks bad to not be developing your own national launch vehicle and we have to rely on Russia to launch our astronauts,” Caceres said.

If next-generation rotorcraft will be more capable than today's fleet, they are also going to be considerably more expensive. It takes a lot of power to go fast, and bigger engines add both weight and cost. "If you want to go above 150 knots [173 mph], you're going to have to pay a premium of 50 to 100 percent," says Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with the Teal Group. Pentagon-funded demonstrator programs allow manufacturers to work out the kinks of new designs and bring down prices.

If next-generation rotorcraft will be more capable than today's fleet, they are also going to be considerably more expensive. It takes a lot of power to go fast, and bigger engines add both weight and cost. "If you want to go above 150 knots [173 mph], you're going to have to pay a premium of 50 to 100 percent," says Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with the Teal Group. Pentagon-funded demonstrator programs allow manufacturers to work out the kinks of new designs and bring down prices.