McCain Intros Bill To Stop RD-180 Use; Pentagon Urges Caution

By on January 27, 2016 at 12:30 PM
Russian-made RD-180 engines propel an Atlas V rocket heavenward.

Russian-made RD-180 engines propel an Atlas V rocket heavenward.

WASHINGTON: Sen. John McCain continued his crusade to stop the Pentagon from using Russia’s highly reliable and cheap RD-180 rocket engines to launch American military satellites during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today.

The Arizona senator and the House Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy of California, introduced a bill today designed to overturn language in the 2016 Omnibus Spending Bill passed last month. Senators Richard Shelby and Richard Durbin inserted language into the sweeping 2,000-page spending bill that lifts the restrictions on ULA’s use of the pool of RD-180s. McCain pledged to strike back, and he is. (My early assessment is that the new bill has little chance of passage.)

Sen. John McCain and Sen. Jack Reed SASC hearing“Today Russia holds many of our most precious national security satellites at risk before they ever get off the ground,” McCain said in his opening statement this morning. “Yet the Department of Defense has actively sought to undermine – with the support of United Launch Alliance (ULA) and the parochial motivations of Senator Shelby and Senator Durbin – the direction of this committee to limit that risk and end the use of the Russian made RD-180 by the end of this decade.”

McCain made the not unreasonable point that the United States’ taxpayers have been paying ULA $800 million each year on average so that ULA is ready and able to launch US military satellites, the central US space policy known as assured access to space. While the Pentagon’s top buyer, Frank Kendall, acknowledged that there is no other contract where the government pays such large amounts to keep a company in business, he also defended the EELV Launch Capability (ELC) contract. “It pays for costs associated with infrastructure. provides a stable base for ULA to plan on,” Kendall told the SASC. That supports about eight launches a year. “The ELC business is not a bad deal… It’s not a subsidy.”

McCain said the US is paying all that money and receiving very little in return, especially as ULA recently refused to bid on the GPS 3 launches. But Kendall, quietly, came back later and rebutted McCain’s charge: “It’s not nothing, as the chairman has indicated. Sorry about that.”

The Pentagon now wants to rely on “public-private partnerships” to guarantee assured access to space. Franke Kendall mentioned them several times. And Andrea Shalal of Reuters reported a Jan. 26 letter from Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work saying this approach would work best and stressing that the US can’t rely on abandoning the use of the RD-180s. An RFP should be out “in the next few months,” Andrea’s story says, and the fiscal 2017 budget proposal will include funding for the partnerships.

Meanwhile, SpaceX and Blue Origin are both angling to handle such launches of large military satellites –and have McCain’s complete support — but neither company is yet ready to step in. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said “it’s theoretically possible, but the devil is in the details.” Kendall was a bit more blunt: “There are people who’d like to be competitors, but they aren’t competitors yet.”

 

Below is a letter from the Defense Department responding to Senator McCain:

Comments

  • originalone

    When I read these types of what ever you want to call them, I’m reminded of that old saying: “cutting ones nose off to spite ones face”. I also get this nagging feeling that McCain could also be what is/was called: “a Manchurian Candidate”. Harsh perhaps, but in the realm of possibilities.

  • vincedc

    I hope the Arizona voters figure this one out.

  • mlc449

    Just go the SpaceX model of pay per launch. Simple.

  • changey

    McCain is right about the cozy relationship between the USAF and Putin’s rocket builders. The DOD has lined ULA’s coffers with assured access to space money for almost a decade. That money was there so ULA would never not be able to meet the nations critical defense needs, hence the all USA Delta IV, and the Russian powered Atlas. Now ULA refuses to bid. Nonsense.

    Now 10 years later ULA can’t compete using the Delta IV against SpaceX, the new entrant. Say what? The US gov routinely pays more than it should for services. Nothing says the US gov can’t write a RFP that overvalues past record against price. This would favor Delta IV. In fact the US gov has done that with ULA giving missions to the more expensive Delta IV rather than the cheaper Atlas which could do the same job outside of the Delta IVH.

    Its an outrage that the US gov is depending upon the good will of Putin, a man who routinely flies nuclear bomb and missile aircraft just outside our 12 mile continental limit of the US or its overseas territories.

    A man that makes humiliating Obama a non too challenging pastime.

    McCain has passed his shelf life for a productive senator, for sure, but on this he is on target.

  • ycplum

    Personally, I think a bill funding research and development for a new rocket would be more appropriate than banning the use of Russian rockets. Yes, banning their rocket will force development of a new rocket booster, but what if one isn’t developed in time? The whole budget sequestration fiasco was based on the belief that the failure of coming up with a budget would be so unpleasant that they “must” agree on a budget. How well did that turn out?

    • J_kies

      Before ULA; DELTA was competitive – the Atlas vice DELTA pricing is nothing more than the L-M side of ULA poking the Boeing side of ULA with a stick.

      Want competition and assured access – tell Boeing and L-M to show up with their own products and debar ULA over its failure to provide the assured access for that 800M+ per year.

  • Nicholas Trueblood

    good move. dont make the beligerent russians richer and force us back into the space race, where we never should have left to begin with.