The Air Force will ground its fleet of Atlas V rockets if the Treasury Department finds that Russia’s space industry reorganization violates sanctions, according to a key official.
Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (AFSMC) chief Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves said Friday if the service is not supposed to be flying Russian-developed RD-180 rocket engines, they will be grounded. RD-180s are developed by NPO Energomash of Khimki, Russia, a partially state-owned company, and are used in the Atlas V.
“If these folks are on the sanctioned list and if the Treasury (Department) comes back and says there’s a problem with that…we will not violate the law,” Greaves told an audience at a Peter Huessy breakfast series event on Capitol Hill. “We’re in compliance with the law today…if it changes, we’ll stay in compliance.”
Reuters reported Feb. 10 that Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) in a letter pressed Air Force Secretary Deborah James and Pentagon acquisition czar Frank Kendall on the legality of doing business with Energomash given sanctions in place against Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and others, who supposedly now have control over the company after a recent reorganization. McCain reportedly wanted answers by Monday. Greaves declined to give an update publicly, but said the Pentagon was coordinating to meet the deadline.
If the Air Force grounds its Atlas V rockets, it will have to rely on its fleet of expensive Delta IV rockets, both of which are developed by United Launch Alliance (ULA), and the newly certified Falcon 9, developed by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX).
The Air Force next month will complete its investigation into SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch failure from last summer and will decide whether to pursue any corrective action or procedural changes. Greaves said he has no indication the investigation will affect Falcon 9’s certification status, which is currently in positive standing. He warned, though, that certification is not permanent and is based on promised work and activity. If that is not followed, Greaves said, certification can be revoked.
The Air Force’s beleaguered Next-Generation Operational Control (OCX) ground system for its Global Positioning System (GPS) platform continues to receive scrutiny from top DoD brass. Calling it DoD’s “number one troubled program,” Greaves said James, Kendall and himself have another meeting scheduled in March with Raytheon [RTN] Chairman and CEO Thomas Kennedy to gauge the program’s progress. Raytheon is the OCX prime contractor.
The Air Force recently awarded Lockheed Martin [LMT] a contract to serve as a backup plan in case Raytheon can’t figure out OCX. Greaves said the contingency operations contract is to have Lockheed Martin modify the current GPS ground control system to allow it to have some modern capability. He elaborated further, saying Lockheed Martin’s contingency contract is in case Raytheon can’t deliver Block 1 of OCX. Greaves said Block 0 flies the GPS constellation while Block 1 is a first substantiation of flying the payload.
Greaves said the big differences between OCX and the current ground system is that the current system was developed in a peacetime era to “trust everyone,” while OCX is for a next-generation “trust no one world,” featuring an information assurance-hardened backbone, as the Air Force is concerned with both inside and outside threats.
Though the Air Force continues to show patience with Raytheon and OCX, Greaves warned that wouldn’t last forever.
“I was on the T-Sat program,” Greaves said. “Nothing is too large to fail.”
Transformational Satellite (T-Sat) was a program canceled in 2009 after years of cost overruns. ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing [BA].