The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) will tackle the Russian rocket engine restrictions in the upcoming authorization season after they were lifted in the fiscal year 2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act.
“The appropriation bill was different than what we did in the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), so we’re going to have to obviously revisit,” HASC Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) told Defense Daily Wednesday before a presentation at the National Press Club in Washington.
United Launch Alliance (ULA) uses the RD-180 in its Atlas V launch vehicle, which powers a majority of national security space launches. The FY ’15 NDAA banned the use of Russian engines in launch, except for those purchased or under contract prior to the Feb. 1, 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea or those purchased in the late 2013 “block buy” of more than 30 launch cores.
The FY ’16 NDAA softened the restriction, allowing for the purchase of nine additional Russian engines. But the FY ’16 Consolidated Appropriations Act lifted those restrictions as it said a contract award for Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) services may be made to a launch service provider competing with any certified launch vehicle in its inventory, regardless of the country of origin of the rocket engine that will be used on its launch vehicle.
Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) late last year publicly floated an outright ban on RD-180 use in the next authorization season as he was upset over the spending bill lifting his Russian rocket engine caps he worked hard to institute. The spending bill provision was created by Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) member Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who believed that the language in the spending bill would reverse the “reckless” restriction put on the use of the RD-180 in the NDAA, which he said undermined our national security. Shelby said military leaders had argued that there will be a multi-year gap in access to space for national security launches under our current policy (Defense Daily, December 16).
Thornberry, during his presentation, said the administration of President Barack Obama is considering submitting its FY ’17 budget request for defense at a level below the amount agreed upon when Congress put together a two-year budget deal that temporarily lifted sequestration budget caps for fiscal years 2016 and 2017. Thornberry said he was disturbed by rumors that the administration may be considering lowering the base amount below the $573 billion that was agreed upon while not asking for increased wartime, or Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), spending that isn’t subject to sequestration caps. Thornberry said the two-year budget deal specified OCO spending at $59 billion.
“Guaranteeing a minimum level of defense spending was the key to getting last year’s defense budget,” Thornberry said. “The terms were clear to everybody and everybody ought to stick to them.”
Thornberry said he’ll look for ways to foster experimentation and prototyping this year, both in developing a technology and its application, to ensure that only mature technology goes into production. He said it’s hard to get money for experimentation without being attached to a program of record and that programs of record tend to be sacrosanct because once they get started, they hardly ever get stopped. Thornberry said to foster innovation through experimentation and prototyping, both the Pentagon and Congress must accept, or even expect, regular small failures in order to have greater success.
ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA].