United Launch Alliance (ULA) followed through on its recent threat by not submitting a bid for the Air Force’s first competed space launch mission in years, a Global Positioning System III (GPS III) launch slated for 2018.
ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye, on the evening of Nov. 16, cited a variety of reasons for the company not bidding for GPS III. Rye said ULA does not have the accounting systems in place to certify that funds from other government contracts would not benefit the GPS III launch mission. She said the Air Force’s request for proposals (RFP) required this certification.
Rye also said the RFP’s lowest price technically acceptable (LPTA) structure allows for no ability to differentiate between competitors on the basis of critical factors such as reliability, schedule certainty, technical capability and past performance. ULA citing LPTA is surprising as the Air Force said in a Sept. 30 statement it would evaluate proposals through a competitive, best-value source selection process.
Rye also cited what ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno said recently: that ULA didn’t have enough Russian-developed RD-180 engines for its Atlas Vs available to bid and, therefore, was unable to submit a timely proposal. Bruno, in his October announcement, likely hoped encouraging the Air Force to enact a national security waiver to enable additional RD-180s to be purchased would allow competition in the GPS III launch, a major service initiative.
Bruno also threw out the option of getting more RD-180s legislatively as the fiscal year 2016 defense authorization bill was being negotiated at the time, but that effort fell through. Rye did not respond to an additional request for comment by press time Nov. 17.
“ULA wants nothing more than to compete,” Rye said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we are unable to submit a compliant bid for the GPS III launch services.”
ULA’s exit from the launch competition leaves only one other company certified to perform national security space launches—Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX). Company spokesman John Taylor on Nov. 17 declined to comment for this story, citing company policy of not disclosing bids. But an industry source on Nov. 17 expected SpaceX to respond to the RFP.
Launch services include launch vehicle production, mission integration and launch operations, according to an Air Force statement. This will be a standalone contract and is the first of nine competitive launch services planned in the FY ’16 budget request under the current “Phase 1A” procurement strategy, which covers awards with FY ’15-17 funding. The next solicitation for launch services will be for a second GPS III mission.
SpaceX in May was certified for national security launches, resulting in two launch service providers. The Air Force did not respond to requests for comment by press time Nov. 17. ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA].