Welcome to this edition of The Intelligence Brief… This week, SpaceX launched USSF-153, a classified U.S. Space Force mission carrying a mysterious payload into orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, highlighting the growing intersection between commercial spaceflight and U.S. national security operations. In our analysis, we’ll be looking at 1) what we currently know about the highly secretive USSF-153 mission, 2) how details surrounding its flight path may offer clues that classified satellites potentially based on SpaceX’s Starshield platform were aboard, 3) how the mission comes amid growing concerns about an emerging era of military competition and potential conflict in Earth’s orbit, and 4) why the launch represents another milestone for SpaceX as reusable commercial rockets play an increasingly important role in national security space missions.

Quote of the Week

“SpaceX’s ongoing work with the Department of Defense and other partners demonstrates our ability to provide in-space and on-ground capability at scale.”

– SpaceX Statement

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RECENT NEWS from The Debrief

• Scientists challenge the lizard brain myth, revealing two distinct neural systems that may explain how mammalian brains evolved.
• Analysis of the 4,000-year-old Devil’s Arrows stone pillar monument has finally revealed the site’s mysterious origins.
• A recent discovery is revealing fascinating new insights about Tyrannosaurus Rex.
• Get all the latest stories from The Debrief, with more breaking stories at the end of this week’s newsletter.

A Classified Mission is Carried to Orbit

Earlier today, SpaceX launched a classified mission for the U.S. Space Force, which carried a mysterious payload to orbit on one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets.

The mission, officially known as USSF-153, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at around 11:37 a.m. EDT on Thursday. Beyond that, little else is known about what, exactly, the classified payload carried aboard the Falcon 9 might have been.

Here’s a look at what we currently know about this morning’s secretive launch, and how it may be related to other recent developments involving the growing use of Earth’s orbit in the advancement of U.S. national security objectives.

USSF-153 Mission

According to the company’s website, SpaceX says the USSF-153 mission marks the 27th flight for the first stage SpaceX rocket booster supporting this mission.

The same booster was previously used for the launches of missions that included the Crew-7, CRS-29, PACE, Transporter-10, EarthCARE, NROL-186, Transporter-13, TRACERS, NROL-48, COSMO-SkyMED Second Generation FM3, and 16 Starlink missions, according to an update on the USSF-153 mission page.

“Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship, which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean,” the SpaceX update read, noting that it may be possible for sonic booms to be heard in the region around Santa Barbara and surrounding communities, adding that “what residents experience will depend on weather and other conditions.”

Clues About a Classified Payload

The launch was live-streamed by SpaceX, and the moment of takeoff of the classified mission was subsequently added to the company’s official X account. However, few additional details about the exact nature of the mission were revealed, although experts have noted that at least a few details about the rocket’s mission could be discernible from its planned flight path, offering some clues about what USSF-153 might be carrying.

Some outlets have noted the similarity between the current mission’s rocket-stage drop zones and those from past SpaceX Starlink Group 15 missions, which could mean that a group of classified satellites, possibly built using SpaceX’s Starshield satellite platform, may be part of what’s on board.

Serving as the national-security counterpart to the technologies driving SpaceX’s massive Starlink broadband constellation, the program reportedly uses the company’s existing satellite and launch technology to support national security missions. If this is indeed a part of USSF-153’s mission, it would add to the increasingly important role commercial space technologies are playing in U.S. military and intelligence operations.

A New Cold War in Space

Last week’s Intelligence Brief newsletter covered recent concerns about potential future conflict in space, which include the use of sophisticated military capabilities in space by the U.S. and foreign adversary nations.

Experts warn that Earth’s orbit might become a critical battlefield in future conflicts, with recent examples of technologies currently being tested for this that include China’s secretive Shenlong spaceplane, as well as the U.S. and its allies demonstrating similar “dogfighting,” rendezvous, and other potentially military operations in orbit.

Additionally, Russia’s longstanding pursuit of anti-satellite weapons adds to the emerging threats that may soon occupy Earth’s orbit. Although it remains unknown whether Thursday’s mission could be related to such capabilities and other technologies aimed at leveraging Earth’s orbit for military purposes, its classified nature does leave this possibility open.

A New Milestone for SpaceX

Finally, Thursday’s mission also represents a milestone in SpaceX’s busy 2026 launch schedule, with USSF-153 expected to become the company’s 104th Falcon 9 mission of the year.

Eighty of those launches have been dedicated to expanding the company’s ever-growing Starlink constellation, which now consists of more than 11,000 active satellites in low Earth orbit.

Despite the unusual secrecy surrounding its cargo, the USSF-153 launch showcases the new reusable commercial rocket industry SpaceX has developed, which is now frequently relied on by the U.S. military for carrying national-security hardware into orbit.

That concludes this week’s installment of The Intelligence Brief. You can read past editions of our newsletter at our website, or if you found this installment online, don’t forget to subscribe and get future email editions from us here. Also, if you have a tip or other information you’d like to send along directly to me, you can email me at micah [@] thedebrief [dot] org, or reach me on X: @MicahHanks.

Here are the top stories we’re covering right now…

Tyrannosaurus Rex was likely one of the Cretaceous period’s most fearsome predators, and a new discovery is revealing how the long-extinct dinosaur may have moved.

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, an international team of researchers reveals the first-ever adult T. rex trackway, discovered in North Dakota.

While fiction media shows dinosaurs in motion, paleontologists still have many questions about how species actually moved. The new discovery goes a long way toward answering these questions with the first-ever record of a real T. rex gait.

Finding a T. Rex Track

The work was a collaboration between the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and England’s Liverpool John Moores University, centered on a literally groundbreaking set of footprints.

The discovery was made in the Hell Creek Formation, one of the world’s most intensely studied Cretaceous and Paleocene rock formations, which continues to reveal new secrets about Earth’s remote past. Although the formation covers thousands of square miles, this particular discovery was made on U.S. Forest Service land outside Marmarth, North Dakota.

Intriguingly, a local teacher at Northglenn High School made the discovery in a fortuitous example of citizen science. His discovery earned him an author position on the resulting paper.

“As a teacher, I’m always telling my students that science starts with curiosity, passion, and careful observation. I never imagined that could lead me to a discovery like this,” said co-author Kent M. Hups.

High Tech Analysis

“The technology we’re able to apply in the digital age means my colleagues could scan the tracks in the field and then send the 3D information over to me to visualize on my computer and in VR, enabling me to take as close a look as they did in person,” said lead author Peter Falkingham, a professor of palaeobiology at Liverpool John Moores University and a dinosaur track expert.

Using high-resolution 3D surface scanning, the team measured each footprint along the 66.5-million-year-old trackway. Using these data, they constructed digital and physical 3D models of the T. rex tracks. The footprints are about three feet long, and the trackway extends for roughly 23 feet. Their size and distinctive narrow toe shape led to the Tyrannosaurus identification, further supported by the known recovery of T. rex fossils in the area.

Tyrannosaurus Movement

This isn’t the first time paleontologists have seen a track believed to have been made by a T. rex, but it is the first time such tracks have been found in a sequence. Locating a series like this provides scientists with crucial new evidence about how the dinosaur moved while it was alive.

“Bones tell us an enormous amount about these animals, but footprints capture a moment of behavior. With a trackway, we can actually follow an animal as it moved across the landscape. That is incredibly rare for T. rex,” said co-author Tyler Lyson, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

The stride between the footprints was about 13 feet, with a symmetrical sequence of two left and two right tracks. Due to weathering, it is challenging to be certain, but the team estimates that the dinosaur was moving at 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour—roughly what would be a brisk walking pace for a human.

The work will continue this fall, when three of the prints will be physically removed from the location and transported by helicopter to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. The institution plans to make the most of the opportunity, providing updates over the winter as researchers conduct an in-person analysis of the tracks.

The paper, “A Large Tridactyl Trackway from the Upper Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation of North Dakota, Likely Attributable to an Adult Tyrannosaurus Rex,” appeared in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology on September 8, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

A Curtin University-led research team has successfully identified the mysterious origin of several 4,000-year-old 25-ton stones, which ancient architects used to construct Britain’s iconic Devil’s Arrows, as Birmingham Rocks in North Yorkshire, over 11 miles (18 kilometers) from the monument’s location.

The researcher behind the first-ever geological source identification of the ancient stone monument said the quarry’s distance and the work required to move such massive stones suggest the ancient architects intentionally selected the material used to construct Devil’s Arrows.

Unraveling the Mysterious Origin of the 4,000-Year-Old Devil’s Arrows

Announcing the discovery, the research team, which included scientists from the University of York, UK, noted that the famous stone pillars stand up to seven meters (22 feet) tall. The team also said the site is unusual because such alignments are rare in lowland settings. Still, researchers have struggled to locate the mysterious origin of the massive stone pillars used to create the over 4,000-year-old monument.

The Curtin-led team noted that previous studies determined that the stones used in Devil’s Arrows were transported to the site during the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age. This range means the site could have been constructed as early as 2000 BC.

Lead author Dr Anthony Clarke, from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, noted the significant challenges with moving the stones over such difficult terrain.

“Each stone weighs more than 25 tonnes, so moving them would have required incredible planning, coordination and engineering skill,” the researcher explained.

Dr. Clarke also highlighted the value this effort suggests these ancient Britons “placed real importance” on the material used in the monument’s construction and the landscape itself.

“It wasn’t just about convenience – the location the stones came from likely held meaning for them,” the researcher explained.

Low Impact Sampling Method Confirms Ancient Stone’s ‘Fingerprints’

To unravel the ancient site’s mysterious origin, the researchers placed tiny pieces of low-adhesion tape on the stones and then removed them. The team said this “low impact” sampling process collected several tiny mineral grains on the tape without measurable damage to the ancient monuments.

According to the statement announcing their solution to the Devil’s Arrows origin mystery, the team performed an analysis of the “fingerprints” of the selected grains. The results matched material from Brimham Rocks.

Critically, the mystery’s solution also addressed the possibility that glacial movement or other natural processes moved the stones over the needed distance. Instead, the team said their results demonstrated that “the stones were intentionally transported by people.”

“Our research shows these stones weren’t simply taken from the nearest available source – they were deliberately chosen from a challenging landscape 18 kilometers away,” Dr Clarke said.

Clarke also said that the results eliminate the nearer site of Plimpton Rocks, which “had previously been identified as the probable source of the stones.”

“Our findings instead point to Brimham Rocks, showing that prehistoric builders transported these enormous stones significantly further than thought,” he explained.

Solving Similar Stone Monument Origin Mysteries

After discovering the mysterious origin of the 4,000-year-old pillars, Dr Clarke said the team will apply its low-impact sampling method to similar stone monument origin mysteries. The team also hopes to conduct future “targeted excavations” at the Devil’s Arrows site and the newly identified source.

Dr. Clarke said that analysis might help explain how these ancient architects moved the massive stone pillars several miles over rugged terrain over 4,000 years ago. The research said the work could also unravel “how these extraordinary monuments were constructed.”

Co-author Dr Jim Leary from the University of York echoed Dr Clarke’s sentiments, while also suggesting that the team’s findings ‘reshaped’ how researchers understand the art of prehistoric monument-building.

“These results show that ancient communities were making deliberate and meaningful choices about where their stones came from,” Dr Leary explained.

The York researcher said their solution to the Devil’s Arrows origin mystery also “highlights the importance of landscape and shared belief systems, as well as the remarkable effort involved in transporting and raising stones of this size.”

The study, “Deliberate Prehistoric Sourcing of the Devil’s Arrows, Britain’s Tallest Stone Row,” was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. 

Christopher Plain has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Reporter at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his novels at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org.

One of the most popular explanations of human behavior has been that somewhere beneath our rational mind lurks an ancient “lizard brain”—a primitive evolutionary holdover responsible for instinct, emotion, fear, and aggression.

There is just one problem. Neuroscientists have long known that the lizard brain story is wrong. Humans did not evolve a sophisticated new brain by simply stacking it on top of an older reptilian one.

But a new study suggests the enduring lizard brain myth may have inadvertently pointed to something more interesting. Mammalian brains do appear to be organized around two broad computational systems—but not an ancient reptilian brain located beneath a newer, more sophisticated one. Instead, the divide appears to reflect two fundamentally different ways of organizing and processing information.

Published in Science Advances, the research combines anatomical measurements from 182 mammalian species with experiments using artificial neural networks. The researchers found a striking evolutionary trade-off between the neocortex and a collection of structures associated with smell, memory, and the limbic system.

Instead of representing “new” and “old” brains, the researchers say these regions may have evolved different wiring styles optimized for solving different kinds of computational problems.

“Rather than an ‘old’ brain and a ‘new’ brain, our results suggest two systems wired for different kinds of computation,” lead author Dr. Nabil Imam, a researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told The Debrief. “The neocortex is wired to preserve spatial relationships—for example, neighboring points in the visual world are analyzed by neighboring parts of the cortex. The limbic system is more diffusely connected and supports holistic associations across different pieces of information.”

“So, the division between the neocortex and limbic system is about how the two systems are wired,” Dr. Imam added.

This distinction offers a very different picture from the famous lizard brain story.

The lizard brain concept grew from the so-called triune brain theory, which portrays the human brain as having evolved in distinct layers. A primitive “lizard brain” handling basic instincts, a mammalian limbic system producing emotion, and, finally, a newer neocortex responsible for higher thought.

The problem is that neuroscience has long since overturned that evolutionary story. Vertebrate brains did not evolve by progressively stacking newer brain regions on top of older, more primitive ones. Instead, vertebrates share essentially the same broad organizational plan, with existing regions changing in size, connectivity, and function over evolutionary time.

The new study suggests, however, that the mammalian brain may be divided very differently—not by evolutionary age, but by how different neural systems are wired to process information.

Across 182 species from 10 taxonomic groups, animals with an unusually large olfactory system tended to have a smaller-than-expected neocortex. Animals with an expanded neocortex tended to show the opposite pattern.

The nine-banded armadillo provides a particularly dramatic example. Armadillos are largely nocturnal and depend heavily on smell while foraging. As researchers note, the armadillo’s olfactory system was approximately 1.5 times larger than expected for its overall brain size. Its hippocampus—a region central to memory and spatial processing—was about twice its expected size.

Its neocortex, meanwhile, was reduced by a factor of 2.8. Primates such as squirrel monkeys sit closer to the other end of the spectrum. They rely heavily on vision and devote a large portion of their expanded neocortex to processing visual information.

At first glance, that could look like evolution trading smell for sight. But the researchers noticed something more intriguing. The hippocampus grew and shrank alongside the olfactory system, even though memory is obviously not another form of smell. Other structures traditionally grouped into the limbic system, including the amygdala and septum, also tended to change together.

That suggested the important difference might not be what these regions process, but how they are wired to process it.

Two Very Different Ways to Build a Brain

Vision offers a relatively straightforward example. Neighboring points in the visual world are generally processed through neighboring areas of the visual system. Touch operates similarly. Locations beside one another on your body retain spatial relationships as the nervous system processes them. Hearing also uses orderly mappings, including those based on sound frequency.

The result is what neuroscientists call “spatiotopic” organization. In simple terms, the brain preserves relationships between incoming information by arranging it into orderly maps.

However, smell works differently. Odors are represented through combinations of activity distributed across networks rather than being laid out in the same neat spatial fashion.

The researchers suspected that this difference might help explain the anatomical trade-off they had identified across mammals. To test the idea, they turned to artificial neural networks trained to handle vision, touch, hearing, and smell.

They then mapped the networks’ internal models onto artificial two-dimensional surfaces resembling sheets of cortex.

Results showed that networks optimized for vision, touch, and hearing produced smooth, highly ordered maps. On a scale in which 1 represented strong spatial order, the visual network scored 0.90, touch scored 0.86, and hearing scored 0.89.

Yet, the smell network scored just 0.11. Rather than producing a smooth map, information was scattered across a fractured, distributed representation. The researchers even found that imposing localized connectivity on the olfactory model harmed its ability to perform its task.

Researchers then examined memory. Using an artificial network designed to reproduce some relational computations associated with the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, researchers again saw a fractured, distributed representation resembling the olfactory system rather than vision, hearing or touch.

For Dr. Imam, one of the most surprising results was that artificial networks arrived at an organization resembling real brains despite learning in profoundly different ways.

“Artificial networks are trained by an algorithm that propagates errors through the network, whereas brains are shaped by evolution and through localized changes in synapses,” Imam explained. “The fact that both nevertheless arrive at similar organization suggests that the structure of the information itself—whether visual, auditory, tactile, or olfactory—determines what kind of wiring works best.”

No “Lizard Brain,” But Evolution May Be Trading One Kind of Brainpower for Another

Researchers next wanted to know whether competition between these two wiring styles could reproduce the anatomical patterns seen across real mammals.

They created an evolutionary simulation containing five artificial networks. Vision, hearing, and touch occupied one computational domain based on localized, spatial organization. Smell and hippocampal memory occupied another based on distributed connectivity.

Then an evolutionary algorithm redistributed computational resources between them.

When selection favored vision, resources moved toward the spatially organized networks. When selection favored smell, the distributed networks expanded.

But something interesting occurred to the simulated hippocampal network. Even though researchers weren’t directly selecting for memory, the hippocampal network grew along with the olfactory network because both shared the same broad computational architecture. As resources shifted toward the other system, both contracted.

That closely resembled the pattern found across real mammalian brains.

“It suggests that evolution may not be selecting individual brain regions one at a time, but rather the functions produced by whole patterns of wiring,” Dr. Imam explained. “Because regions that share similar wiring tend to grow or shrink together, selection for one kind of function comes at the expense of another, given that the system must operate with limited energy and space.”

That does not mean an animal with a larger neocortex is simply more intelligent than one with a larger limbic system. Nor does the distributed system represent a primitive emotional brain fighting against a rational one.

Instead, the two architectures appear suited to different computational problems. Evolution may have repeatedly adjusted how much neural real estate mammals devote to each.

Nevertheless, researchers caution that their models are intentionally simplified. Anatomical measurements came from several datasets; some taxonomic groups are better represented than others, and artificial neural networks are not replicas of biological brains.

The evolutionary model is intended to demonstrate that a relatively simple developmental mechanism could produce the observed trade-off, not to reconstruct exactly how mammalian brains evolved.

Still, the research raises another interesting possibility extending beyond the demise of the “lizard brain.” Our brains may arrive in the world with considerably more computational structure already built in than the familiar idea of a blank slate implies.

“The brain may be much less of a blank slate than we often imagine,” Dr. Imam told The Debrief. “Evolution and development build useful assumptions into its wiring before experience-driven learning.”

It is also another example of something scientists are increasingly encountering across very different areas of biology: evolution can produce remarkably sophisticated structures and systems that human engineers are just starting to understand, much less reproduce.

In a recent study covered by The Debrief, researchers discovered that cable bacteria construct microscopic electrical pathways from nickel-rich nanoribbons arranged remarkably like braided electrical wires. The naturally grown structures may achieve extraordinary conductivity while remaining flexible, properties that researchers are now interested in replicating for bio-based electronics.

The mammalian brain represents an enormously more complicated example, but the underlying lesson may be similar. Evolution does not begin with a blank slate each generation. It can build useful solutions into biological architecture itself, leaving subsequent learning along with adaptation to operate within structures refined over immense spans of evolutionary time.

That could also help explain one of the most striking differences between biological intelligence and today’s artificial intelligence. Modern AI systems can require enormous datasets to acquire abilities that biological brains learn from comparatively limited experience.

“That built-in structure may explain why brains can learn efficiently from relatively little experience, whereas most artificial networks require enormous datasets to learn useful functions,” Imam said. “The idea has deep roots in philosophy of mind, but only recently have neuroscience and computer science begun to provide concrete demonstrations of how such built-in structure can aid function.”

The recent study, “Dual computational systems in the development and evolution of mammalian brains,” appeared in Science Advances.

Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com