A prominent lawmaker is investigating whether the Air Force geared its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) requirements in favor of incumbent United Launch Alliance (ULA).
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSI) Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) told
Defense Daily in a recent interview one requirement he believes was slanted toward ULA was a seven percent reserve fuel requirement, in which an upper stage rocket delivering a payload to its intended orbit must have at least seven percent fuel remaining to ensure proper delivery.
A Hill source said the reserve fuel requirement appears to be based on a historical average of unused fuel on ULA boosters as opposed to a true requirement for mission success. The Defense Department defines a requirement as characteristics that identify the accomplishment levels needed to achieve specific objectives under a given set of conditions and states what the system is supposed to do, but not specify how the system is to perform.
ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye said June 27 in an email the fuel requirement performance margin has been consistent for the EELV program since the original competition in 1998. Air Force requirements, Rye said, are based on technical assessment of best practices and experience. Rye said ULA’s 100 years of combined legacy between Atlas and Delta launch vehicles with more than 1,300 launches would “of course” be the basis of the data used for technical evaluation by government experts that define the requirements and specifications.
Ruppersberger said he’s concerned that these types of requirements stifle potential competition into EELV, which has been a big priority for the lawmaker. Ruppersberger told Defense Daily in 2012, before the Air Force issued its multi-billion dollar “block buy” of 36 launch cores to ULA, that although ULA was the “best in the world,” it was too expensive for the Air Force to continue using. EELV launches intelligence payloads for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in addition to military payloads.
“These are the things that…other people involved with this…are really saying: ‘Why are you taking what ULA’s requirements are,’” Ruppersberger said.
Ruppersberger also said he’s concerned that United States space companies are going to foreign launch providers for launches because of the prioritization the Air Force gives to national security space launches. Another Hill source said commercial companies can’t stomach the financial risk from having a launch delayed due to an issue on a national security launch. The source said companies are willing to pay ULA extra for a guaranteed launch date, but they can’t get guarantees. ULA launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., and Vandenberg AFB, Calif.
“The issue of launch scheduling is pretty bad right now with ULA,” Ruppersberger said. “American companies are saying ‘We might pay more, but we can’t wait for scheduling.”
Ruppersberger weighed into the next-generation rocket engine debate, saying the Air Force should not replicate the RD-180 by making the exact same engine on U.S. soil. This is one option the Pentagon is weighing as it considers a future without the Russian supplied engine lifting domestic payloads into space. Ruppersberger said he wants a full competition where DoD puts out requirements and companies respond with their best offers.
“We have to start manufacturing our own engines, but not replace,” Ruppersberger said. “We probably know enough about them (where) we can probably do that, but we also have to move on. We also want to make sure we do it better because I thin, really, if we do it the right way, we’ll put the Russians out of business because we’ll be more competitive and we’ll have a better engine. That’s my goal.”
The House Appropriations Committee (HAC) in its fiscal year 2015 bill provided $220 million for toward a next-generation engine. Ruppersberger said not only did he believe was that was enough money, he said he was one of the key players who had that funding in the bill text. Though he’s not currently on an appropriations committee, Ruppersberger said he was formerly on one and will return to the influential House Appropriations defense subcommittee when he leaves HPSI. The full House passed the FY ’15 appropriations bill June 20.
“We need to be very aggressive…because we can’t stall and we can’t put a small amount in,” Ruppersberger said.
The Air Force did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
The RD-180 is developed by NPO Energomash, a partially state-owned Russian firm, and is distributed in the U.S. by RD AMROSS, a joint venture or NPO Energomash and Pratt & Whitney of United Technologies Corp. [UTX] ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA].