The fifth Mobile User Objective System (MUOS-5) communications satellite experienced a “failure” in its orbit-raising propulsion system while being transferred from its initial orbit to its final orbit June 29, the U.S. Navy said Aug. 2.

“The satellite remains in a stable intermediate orbit since experiencing the anomaly,” the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) said in a statement. “The MUOS team is continuing to evaluate the situation, considering alternate orbit adjustment options, calculating mission impact and investigating all options before proceeding.”

The announcement came several weeks after the Navy revealed that the Lockheed Martin-built [LMT] satellite had experienced an unspecified “anomaly” during the transfer. MUOS-5 lifted off aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket on June 24 and was projected to enter its test location 22,000 miles above Hawaii by July 3. But the anomaly forced the transfer maneuver to be halted at least temporarily.

MUOS-5 was launched as a spare for the new MUOS constellation, whose first four satellites provide ultra-high-frequency satellite communications for military operations. MUOS is designed to provide near-global, smartphone-like communications for mobile military forces, including aircraft, ships and ground troops. It is intended to eventually replace the aging Ultra High Frequency Follow-On (UFO) satellite system.

The FAA on July 20 approved Moon Express’ lunar mission, which the company called the first time the federal government has given a private enterprise permission to travel beyond earth’s orbit and land on the moon.

Moon Express said it received the green light for pursuing its 2017 lunar mission following in-depth consultations with the FAA, White House, State Department, NASA and other federal agencies. The FAA, in a statement, said it formally made a favorable payload determination for the Moon Express MX-1E mission and determined that the launch of the payload does not jeopardize public health and safety, safety of property, United States national security or foreign policy related interests or international obligation of the U.S.

The FAA said as long as none of the information provided to the agency changes in a material manner and the FAA does not become aware of any issues the review did not consider that could affect the determination, the FAA considers this determination final. The FAA said if a launch operator applies to the agency for a license to launch a vehicle carrying the MX-1E payload, the favorable payload destination will be incorporated in its review of the license application.

Despite approving Moon Express’ mission, the FAA warned that not all non-traditional space missions may lend themselves to favorable payload determinations.  Future missions, the agency said, may require additional authority to be provided to the FAA to ensure conformity with the Outer Space Treaty. The FAA said suggested language for legislative relief and the relative merits and needs have been transmitted to Congress. In the meantime, the FAA will continue to work with industry to provide support for non-traditional missions on a case-by-case basis when the law permits.

MX-1E is a robotic lander spacecraft capable of transfer from earth orbit to the moon. It should make a soft landing on the lunar surface and perform post-landing relocations through propulsive “hops,” according to the FAA. Moon Express submitted its request to the FAA on April 8.

Moon Express is also competing for the $30 million Google [GOOGL] Lunar Xprize with MX-1E. The company in December received official verification of its launch contract with Rocket Lab as part of the contest. Only Moon Express and Space IL have verified launch contracts, a critical qualification for the prize.

The Air Force on Aug. 3 released the request for proposals (RFP) for its Global Positioning System III-3 (GPS III-3) launch scheduled for February 2019.

This launch competition is important because the Air Force did not have true competition for its last launch contract award. The last one, in April for GPS III-2, featured only one bidder: Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX). United Launch Alliance (ULA) declined to bid for the contract, citing a variety of reasons, including not having an appropriate accounting system in place and the RFP’s lowest price technically acceptable (LPTA) structure. The Air Force said Aug. 3 in a statement that the GPS III-3 RFP would evaluate proposals on a best value basis with bids due Sept. 19.

Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (AFSMC) chief Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves said in a statement that launch system certification is a key element for this solicitation. Before contract award, the contracting officer will verify that the offeror has a certified launch system as part of a responsibility determination resulting in a high technical bar. The Air Force did not respond an interview request.

Contract award is expected between October and December, according to AFSMC. Likely bidders include SpaceX, ULA and possibly Orbital ATK [OA], which is developing its own Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV)-capable rocket. SpaceX spokesman John Taylor declined comment for this story. Orbital ATK did not respond to a request for comment.

ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye, while not declaring her company’s intentions, said a best value launch service competition with evaluation of mission success and assurance and past performance, including demonstrated schedule reliability, is appropriate and needed for this competition.

Critical certification assessments the Air Force will make to ensure bidders can meet government requirements include: flight margin verification, flight hardware and software qualification, compliance with orbital insertion accuracy, design and mission reliability and compliance with standard interface specification. Several unique subfactors include: orbital accuracy, mass to orbit, launch concept of operations and risk mitigation plans. Past performance is embedded within the orbital accuracy and mass to orbit subfactors.

ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA]. Click here to view the model contract for the GPS III-3 mission.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently expressed pessimism that the Defense Department’s new Principal Deputy Space Adviser (PDSA) could truly improve how the Pentagon procures space programs.

In a report (GAO-16-592R) released July 27, GAO said DoD has issues procuring space programs because leadership responsibilities are fragmented and inefficient, partly due to a lack of central leadership. GAO said as many as 60 stakeholder organizations across DoD, the executive office of the president, the intelligence community (IC) and civilian agencies have leadership responsibilities.

The GPS III program is a platform that could use improved acquisition. Photo: Lockheed Martin.The GPS III program is a platform that could use improved acquisition. Photo: Lockheed Martin.

Of these, GAO said eight organizations, including Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), have space acquisition management responsibilities, 11 have oversight responsibilities and six are involved in setting requirements for defense space programs.

GAO cited a number of reasons for its pessimism that PDSA would truly improve DoD space acquisition.  It said the Air Force secretary was previously designated as the executive agent (EA) for space in 2003 to unify space leadership. However, GAO said this role proved ineffective for several reasons, including insufficient authority and difficulty coordinating the numerous stakeholders. GAO also said several major studies have advocated broad enterprise-level reorganizations, including centralized leadership and improved acquisition performance, but DoD has generally shied away from such broad measures.

GAO said challenges are magnified in space programs because space technologies are frequently obsolete by the time they are deployed. DoD space acquisitions, experts told GAO, generally take too long due to fragmented leadership, a redundant oversight bureaucracy and difficulty coordinating among numerous stakeholders.

GAO found that the NRO’s acquisition model could be worthy of emulating. Officials told GAO that the NRO’s processes appear more streamlined than DoD’s as NRO program managers are only two levels removed from the main acquisition decision maker. On top of that, experts and officials told GAO that no one seems to be in charge of space acquisitions and many remain skeptical that the recently designated PDSA will have sufficient decision-making authority to address these concerns.

However, other experts, including ones from PDSA, told GAO they strongly believed that PDSA will be able to effectively consolidate fragmented leadership responsibilities. GAO said while it was too early to gauge whether PDSA had sufficient authority to consolidate space leadership responsibilities, PDSA authorities told GAO they will develop metrics to help assess the effectiveness of the PDSA role.

An executive from a commercial satellite communications (COMSATCOM) operator on July 29 doubted the ability of PDSA to improve how DoD procures space programs. The executive told sister publication Defense Daily PDSA has supposed responsibility, but still does not have the right authorities, especially budget authority, and that the services still have too much individual power. Each service, the executive said, is too engaged in space, especially the Army.

“There is so much duplication of effort,” the COMSATCOM executive said. “They need to start over.”

GAO proposed a number of overall reforms to help improve DoD space acquisition. These include streamlining reviews and delegating more decision-making authority to lower levels. They also include increasing unity of national security space decisions between DoD and NRO, achieving lasting change that cannot be quickly undone and to allow time for the changes to work and providing sufficient acquisition, execution and budget authority.

GAO also proposed a number of outside-the-box reforms in case the PDSA role does not prove effective. GAO proposed creating a defense space agency that would combine the military space functions into one agency, but would leave the NRO unchanged. It also proposed a space acquisition agency that combined SMC and NRO into one agency.

GAO, lastly, proposed a space force, a new military department for the space domain. These three options, GAO said, would likely result in significant short-term disruption to DoD’s space organizational structures, roles and responsibilities.

PDSA officials told GAO they believe the new office, created in 2015, will resolve these issues because its stated goal is to unify DoD space leadership; however, this change does not incorporate new budgetary and organizational authorities that DoD officials and experts say may prove necessary to overcome a history of insufficient centralized space leadership.

When contacted for comment July 29, an Air Force spokesperson pointed to DoD’s comment in the back of the GAO report. DoD said it does not concur with GAO publishing the report at this time because it contains “no new information” on the reforms already adopted and states clearly that it is “too early to gauge” whether these reforms are working. DoD called the report “entirely retrospective.”

GAO disagreed, arguing that the primary focus was to establish the current condition upon which future improvements might be made. The PDSA director is Winston Beauchamp, who is also the deputy under secretary of the Air Force for space.

Orbital ATK [OA] on Aug. 10 reported strong earnings in its second quarter despite a slight drop in sales, but the company said the results are preliminary due to an ongoing review of accounting matters with the company’s four-year old small caliber ammunition contract with the Army that is expected to have a loss over its 10-year term.

David Thompson, president and CEO of Orbital ATK, said at the outset of the company’s investor call that that its financial results were “mixed” given lower than expected sales while profit margins exceeded expectations and cash flow was strong.

The accounting issue related to small caliber ammunition production at the government-owned, contractor-operated Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri stems from legacy ATK aggressively bidding a recompete on that $2.3 billion contract and the company failing to sufficiently curb production costs, which will result in a loss over the contract term, Thompson and other Orbital ATK officials said.

The charge stemming from the ammunition contract is expected to be between $400 million and $450 million pre-tax and between $250 million and $280 million after-tax, Orbital ATK said. The company expects to restate financial statements for last year and the first quarter of 2016.

The accounting issue was discovered during a corporate-wide review of the company’s many contracts and so far the issue appears to be isolated to the small ammo contract, Thompson said. The cost trends on the contract were “obscured” by the implementation of a new enterprise resource planning system, Garrett Pierce, the company’s chief financial officer, said on the call.

The officials said that there wasn’t any malfeasance or misbehavior associated with the accounting issue.

Orbital ATK will record no margin on the ammunition contract but the primary headwind going forward will be about a $25 million dent to free cash flow this year and next versus earlier expectations. Even though the company expects a loss over the term of the contract, Thompson said it will continue to find ways to cut costs in the program.

Net income in the quarter increased 32 percent to $72.1 million, $1.23 earnings per share (EPS), from $54.8 million (92 cents EPS) a year ago, driven by higher operating income across all three of the company’s segments, a lower tax rate and favorable pension adjustments. Operating margin rose 2 percent to 11 percent.

Excluding costs related to the merger more than a year ago between Orbital Sciences and Alliant Techsystems, adjusting net income in the quarter was $79 million ($1.35 EPS), which beat consensus estimates by three cents.

At the segment level, operating income was up on higher margins in the Launch Vehicles division, higher sales in defense electronics and missile products, and higher margins in the Advanced Programs division within the Space Systems Group.

Sales in the quarter fell 2 percent or $23 million to $1.1 billion. Orbital ATK said that declines at the Space Systems and Flight Systems Groups more than offset an increase at the Defense Systems Group.

At Space and Flight Systems, revenues were down related to launch vehicles and commercial satellites. Thompson said the commercial satellite industry is in the down phase of the business cycle and that orders this year are coming in later than expected. Defense revenues were higher on electronics and missile products.

With sales lower than expected in the quarter and continued softness in commercial satellites, Orbital ATK lowered its top line guidance for the year to $4.5 billion from prior expectation of between $4.6 billion and $4.7 billion. With a better than expected tax rate and margin performance, the company increased the low end of its adjusted per share guidance by a nickel to $5.30 and left the top of the range unchanged at $5.50.

The free cash headwind at Lake City combined with the weak commercial satellite market led Orbital ATK to lower its free cash flow guidance in 2016 by $50 million to between $225 million and $275 million. In the quarter, free cash flow was nearly $111 million.

Orbital ATK returned $35 million in cash to shareholders in the quarter in the form of dividends and share repurchases.

Orders in the quarter were nearly $1.6 billion and firm backlog at the end of the quarter was $8.5 billion, up 1 percent versus a year ago. Total backlog stood at $15.2 billion, 25 percent higher than a year ago.

Investors reacted negatively to Orbital ATK’s results on Aug. 10, sending the company’s shares down just over 20 percent to close at $70.79 from the Aug. 9 close of $88.77. Cowen & Co. downgraded the company’s stock from outperform to market perform.

Orbital ATK [OA] for a second time has delayed its re-engined Antares return to flight, this time targeting the second half of September, according to company COO Blake Larson.

The company previously pushed back its Antares return to flight from July to August. Larson, in a conference call with investors Aug. 10, blamed a variety of interrelated factors, including Orbital ATK’s continued processing, inspection and testing of the flight vehicle at the Wallops Island Flight Facility, Va., launch site. He also cited “massive scheduling” of crew activities on the International Space Station (ISS) in preparation for upcoming crew and cargo missions for NASA.

Larson said he expects to identify a more specific launch date in the following weeks. Orbital ATK, he said, has been conducting final integration checkout of the flight vehicle to ensure that all technical, quality and safety standards are met or exceeded. Antares will eventually fly as part of a NASA Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) mission called OA-5 that will deliver food and cargo to ISS.

Antares’ return to flight will also feature the debut of the rocket using a RD-181. It previously used an Aerojet Rocketdyne [AJRD]-refurbished Russian engine known as the AJ-26, but it blew up in the company’s late 2014 launch failure. The launch failure accelerated the company’s plans to move away from the AJ-26.

Despite the delays, Orbital ATK has been making steady progress toward Antares’ return to flight. Larson said the company in May successfully completed a 30 second hot fire of Antares that tested its modified first stage core and two liquid-fuel RD-181 engines. The hot fire test also tested the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport launch pad architecture at Wallops Island.

Larson’s remarks are courtesy of the website Seeking Alpha.

Most of the changes the Air Force made to spur competition in its third Global Positioning System III (GPS III-3) launch-mission solicitation focused on contract execution, according to a key officer.

Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (AFSMC) chief Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves said Aug. 5 via a spokeswoman that elements of the request for proposals (RFP) such as the model contract, performance work statements (PWS), contract data requirements list (CDRL) and payment plan were modified to add a milestone payment for upper stage disposal. The service did this, Greaves said, to further incentivize offerors to comply with orbital debris requirements.

Greaves said the Air Force adjusted the initial and final contract deliverable to appropriate payment milestones to spur competition. The Air Force, he said, also added language to the RFP emphasizing the importance of launch system certification as a key element and high technical bar providing required insight into the technical capabilities and rigorous processes that demonstrate a contractor’s ability to design, develop, manufacture and launch military missions.

The Air Force appears to have learned from its previous GPS III launch RFP as United Launch Alliance (ULA) in 2016 publicly declared it wouldn’t bid for the contract for a variety of reasons, including cost accounting requirements and RD-180 engine availability. Greaves said these concerns have been resolved. Infusing competition into the military launch market has been a key initiative of the Air Force under Secretary Deborah James. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) was awarded the GPS III-2 contract.

The Air Force, Greaves said, considered using other source selection methodologies, including value adjusted total evaluated price (VATEP), but eventually determined the requirements for this specific GPS III-3 mission did not warrant or support a change in evaluation approach. However, Greaves said VATEP and other methodologies will be considered for future competitions supporting different missions with their unique requirements.

A former NASA official believes Air Force leadership has been painted into a corner in its effort to infuse competition into EELV missions. Charles Miller, president of NexGen Space LLC, said Aug. 8 if the Air Force has a competition with one competitor clearly more expensive than the other, the logical strategy for the more expensive contractor will be, first, to try and persuade the Air Force to alter the rules to minimize the importance of cost. If that doesn’t work, Miller said, the more expensive contractor would likely not bid, which is what ULA did last time around.

Miller believes the Air Force should not measure “success” for GPS III-3 on whether it gets at least two bids. That, he said, gives the competitors too much leverage to game the rules of the competition. He said the competitors can force the Air Force to write the rules to their liking or refuse to play.

Instead, Miller said the Air Force should write the rules as it thinks appropriate and merited and if one bidder decides to not bid, that is their choice. Prospective bidders are ULA, SpaceX and possibly Orbital ATK [OA], which is developing its own Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV)-class rocket based on solid rocket motors.

Another industry observer believes the Air Force is facing a tall order in infusing competition into launch. Brian Weeden, technical advisor for the Secure World Foundation and a retired Air Force officer, said Aug. 8 the service is trying to figure out a path to develop additional launch capability that will bring down costs and eliminate reliance on the “wild card” RD-180 engine without jeopardizing reliability or the ability to get national security payloads to their proper orbits.

Weeden said the mainstay of the current national security launch fleet has been the Atlas V, powered by the RD-180, and that there has been a lot of political pressure to eliminate that dependency. But right now, he said, only ULA can deliver the payload mass and sizes to all of the orbit regimes needed to support national security missions.

Weeden believes the Air Force’s ideal situation is the budget and policy sectors being able to foster development of multiple new American launch capabilities such as ULA’s Vulcan, and perhaps others, while also encouraging the continued development of SpaceX’s capabilities. Weeden said that would give the Air Force a variety of launch providers to choose from in order to meet all its requirements.

But Weeden said exchanging one monopoly for another would put the Air Force back at square one. If there is not competition for the GPS III-3 launch, Weeden said, that may make it harder for the Air Force to get to the end state it wants. Weeden also said if the service ends up with SpaceX replacing ULA as the monopoly provider of space launch, it might not be any better than the current situation of ULA monopoly.

LOGAN, Utah—Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) has no intentions of bringing back the Falcon 1 small satellite launch vehicle, company President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said Aug. 9.

Speaking at the Small Satellite Conference, Shotwell said while the market shows greater promise for dedicated small satellite launchers today, SpaceX will not be reviving its first vehicle, which was dedicated to this market.

“We are not going to bring Falcon 1 back,” she said, explaining that the company is, instead, choosing to serve the smallsat market through rideshares, with complete rideshares being one of the best ways. Spaceflight Inc. recently purchased a full Falcon 9 mission entirely dedicated to smallsats. Shotwell pointed to this approach as one of the ways SpaceX will continue to serve the smallsatmarket without the Falcon 1.

The Falcon 1 was a two-stage rocket that used a Merlin engine for the first stage and a Kestrel engine for the second stage. The inaugural rocket had three failures that nearly undid the then-fledgling company before successfully launching on Sept. 28, 2008, from the Marshall Islands.

That mission delivered a 165 kg payload simulator to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). After one more mission, in which the Falcon 1 successfully launched RazakSAT for Malaysia, SpaceX retired the rocket and progressed from there with the Falcon 9.

“The market was just not there, and when the target market crashed in 2010, it really made that vehicle almost impossible to keep going and make money,” Shotwell said. She said though the demand for smallsat launch has since changed dramatically, SpaceX would leave providing dedicated light launch vehicles to other companies.

“We couldn’t get it to earn its place on the factory floor,” Shotwell said. “Falcon 9 and Dragon were much better products for us to pursue without completely giving up on the smallsat market. I’m hoping that the case has changed enough. Certainly the numbers–both the investment numbers as well as the number of launches–have changed dramatically and that is something that the Falcon 1 did not have.”

Surveying the market today for smallsat launches, Shotwell estimated that more than 10,000 such spacecraft could launch over the next decade. SpaceX has flown a number of smallsats, typically as secondary payloads on Dragon missions to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA. Shotwell said reusability is the company’s number one goal now and that achieving this goal would open up more launch opportunities for smallsats.

Shotwell said SpaceX is intensely testing back in Texas the first stage booster that returned following the JCSAT 14 mission for Sky Perfect JSAT of Japan. She said the booster for this mission was “the most beat up during reentry” compared to the three other recovered boosters. These tests are leading up to SpaceX’s first attempt at reusing a rocket booster with a paying customer.

“We are going to run as many tests on this stage as we can pull off in between production missions that we have to go test on that stand,” Shotwell said. “Hopefully, we will get to more than four, but probably eight to 10 of these before we go ahead and refly.”

Shotwell also mentioned recovering the second stage of the rocket as well, estimating that this may take another five years or so to figure out. She said SpaceX “spent a fortune” on the Falcon 9 to upgrade it to a version that could land after delivering a payload to orbit.

The result is the upgraded Falcon 9, which Shotwell said features improved engines, larger propellant tanks and the use of highly densified, super-chilled liquid oxygen (lox) fuel, which gave about a 30 percent propellant residual for the first stage’s return flight. Feeling greater confidence in the system, Shotwell said SpaceX may fly not one, but two of the previously flown first stage boosters in 2016.

SpaceX has the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy coming up. Shotwell said this rocket, which features three Falcon 9 boosters strapped together, will launch more than 30 satellites during its maiden mission. She admitted that the idea of the Falcon Heavy, though simple in concept, has proven complicated. The first mission, originally planned for 2016, is delayed to the third quarter of 2017. The rocket, while providing launch capability for heavier payloads than the Falcon 9 can support, will also provide additional launch opportunity for smallsats, she said.

“There should be a lot of extra capacity on this rocket,” Shotwell said. “Hopefully, we will fly a lot of (EELV Secondary Payload Adapter) ESPA, or ESPA-like rings underneath the primary payload to provide regular access.”

While SpaceX fulfills its goal of interplanetary travel, Shotwell said these missions will also provide future opportunities for smalsats to travel far.

“Mars and the Moon, I think, are now going to be quite accessible to the (smallsat) community,” she added. The first Red Dragon Mars-mission is slated for 2018.

SpaceX itself is working on its own fleet of small satellites for telecommunications services around Earth, for which the company has provided limited details. Shotwell said the company is continuing to work on its smallsat constellation, expected to be around 4,000 satellites, for global broadband services, including potential use of laser communications.

“We actually are working on some satellite componentry, but mostly on the payload to facilitate a global internet system…assuming we can get the technology right,” she said.

The Air Force and Lockheed Martin [LMT] shipped the third Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) missile-warning satellite to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., the week of Aug. 1 for its fall launch.

The SBIRS Geosynchronous Earth Orbit Flight 3 (GEO-3) satellite flew from Sunnyvale, Calif., where it was built, to Florida aboard an Air Force C-5 Galaxy transport plane. It is scheduled to lift off aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket in October.

The SBIRS constellation, designed to replace aging Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites, will consist of GEO satellites and sensors on host satellites in highly elliptical orbit (HEO). HEO-1 and HEO-2 achieved orbit in 2006 and 2008.

GEO-1 and GEO-2 were launched in 2011 and 2013, respectively. GEO-4 is in storage and will undergo final assembly before being launched in 2017. GEO-5 and GEO-6, which will replace the first two satellites, are in production and are to be available for launch in 2020 and 2021. GEO-5 and GEO-6 will have a newer bus design.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a longtime critic of U.S. missile defense programs, recommends in a new report that the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system receive greater oversight to help it overcome its history of reliability problems.

Eager to deploy GMD, the President George W. Bush Administration quickly fielded the long-range missile defense system without subjecting it to many of the traditional acquisition rules for new military systems, such as setting specific performance requirements and outlining the tests a system must pass before being considered operational. A similarly “lax approach” continued in the Obama Administration, the 60-page report contends. As a result, the GMD system has been plagued by test failures, with only a third of intercept attempts being successful since the system was deployed in 2004.

To remedy the situation, the report offers a host of recommendations, including that the system face more frequent and rigorous tests, that a team outside MDA develop test targets and conditions and that the deployment of more interceptors be halted until the system’s flaws have been fixed.

“The GMD system’s exemption from the proven ‘fly-before-you-buy’ process has had dire and lasting consequences,” UCS wrote. “In short, the United States must fundamentally change its approach to strategic missile defense.”

In a statement, MDA said it is taking steps to improve the system’s reliability, including redesigning the interceptor’s exo-atmospheric kill vehicle (EKV). “The redesigned kill vehicle (RKV) leverages mature technologies to offer superior operational effectiveness, reliability, producibility, testability, maintainability and affordability compared to the EKV,” the agency wrote.

MDA is on track to increase the number of GMD interceptors from 30 to 44 by 2017 “in response to the growing threat from North Korea,” the statement continued.

The Air Force on August 11 awarded contracts to Raytheon [RTN], L-3 Communications [LLL] and ViaSat [VSAT] for Protected Tactical Service Field Demonstration (PTSFD).

PTSFD will demonstrate the ability to provide wideband anti-jam communications to tactical users using the Wideband Global Satellite Communications (WGS) constellation and commercial SATCOM. The contracts are cost-plus-incentive-fee deals. Aerial view of the Pentagon, Arlington, VA

Raytheon’s contract is worth $40 million, L-3’s $38 million and ViaSat’s $33 million. The awards were the result of a competitive acquisition and five offers were received. Lockheed Martin [LMT] spokeswoman Lauren Fair said August 12 the company did not bid for the contract.

The Air Force took a step forward in its effort to unload excess ICBM motors, despite no changes in federal law or space policy that would allow it to do so, by issuing a request for information (RFI) on Aug. 4.

The notice, posted on Federal Business Opportunities (FBO), said the Air Force’s intent is to obtain information from the spacecraft, launch vehicle and spaceport communities regarding the effect of proposed legislative change in the management of excess ballistic missile motors. The Air Force likely feels encouraged by language in both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees’ fiscal year 2017 bill reports that recommend provisions requiring the United States comptroller general to conduct a cost and benefit analysis of allowing the use of these excess motors for commercial space launch purposes.

 In its RFI, the Air Force says no more than 15 excess motors would be expected to be available per year for commercial launches. Commercial use of excess motors for the launch of international payloads could be allowed, where consistent with international treaties and federal government policy and control regimes.

Air Force Secretary Deborah James on August 10 said although the service has not received presidential permission to move forward, this is simply an attempt to become better informed on the issue. Both federal law and national space policy prohibit the service from selling excess ICBM motors for use in U.S. commercial launches.

The Senate-passed defense authorization bill requires a briefing to Congress by Sept. 1. A bill has not been signed into law by President Barack Obama. Both the House and Senate are currently in conference over the bills.

“Although the bills have not yet become law, we’re getting a jump start on the task,” James told reporters at the Pentagon. “No, we do not have any change in law or policy which would swing it one way or another.”

Allowing the Air Force to unload excess ICBM motors for use in commercial launches is vehemently opposed by many in the commercial space industry who are concerned that it would not only water down the market for commercial launches but would penalize companies investing their own money to develop new cutting-edge launch vehicles. Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF) President Eric Stallmer said August 12 in an email that the organization hopes the Air Force would look at the recommendations and input from the entire launch industry and not just from a select few companies that would benefit.

“I remain concerned that any decision that does not take into consideration the economic and innovation perspective of the commercial marketplace could have long term ramifications on the U.S. launch market,” Stallmer said.

Orbital ATK [OA] has come out in favor of the Air Force unloading excess ICBM motors. Though the company didn’t respond to a request for comment August 12, Orbital ATK President David Thompson said in May he supported the move, but with a caveat of not using the motors in the 100 kg to 400 kg commercial launch class. The company uses excess ICBM motors in its Minotaur launch vehicle, which is currently restricted by law to using these motors only for DoD flights.

The Air Force’s most pressing information it wants to know from companies are: any impact that expanded transfer of these motors for commercial use could have on the ability of existing, or planned commercial launch capabilities to meet national security requirements; an assessment of the impact of minimum payload pass and payload aggregation restrictions to the fair market value and an assessment of methodologies for determining fair market value of the motors and what companies believe is a fair price.

Responses are due Aug. 19.