RAND Briefs Congress: America Faces Likely NatSec Launch Shortfall

WASHINGTON: The Defense Department faces a high risk there may be too few rockets available to launch national security space satellites, the RAND Corp. finds.

“My biggest message from this report is that we do have a near-term risk of a supply shortage — in that we will not have enough rockets to get our national security payloads to space —  and I want them to be prepared for that,” Bonnie Triezenberg, RAND’s Senior Engineer, told Breaking Defense last night in a phone interview.

RAND, she said, has briefed the House and Senate Armed Service Committee staffs, and is in the process of briefing the relevant intelligence committees on the findings of the study. “They are in listening mode,” she said.

Triezenberg is the lead author of RAND’s study, “Assessing the Impact of U.S. Air Force National Security Space Launch Acquisition Decisions.” The study it reviews the current state of the commercial launch market as well as the NSSL acquisition plan.

“In many conceivable futures, the USAF’s current acquisition plan is unlikely to provide sufficient near-term supply of NSS-certified launch vehicles,” the study found.

Because of the magnitude of that risk, RAND concluded: “[W]e believe a larger policy conversation regarding resource allocation is needed. We encourage the U.S. Congress and the larger NSS community to engage in a meaningful dialog with the USAF regarding how to prioritize these launch-related risks within the larger context of all national security risks that the USAF must balance.”

Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) released the study late on April 8, and welcomed it as in line with DoD’s own analyses and acquisition plans. At the same time, the announcement slid over the fact that RAND assessed risks in the short term as higher than the service has anticipated.

In essence, the Air Force is arguing that there are two reasons why it feels its current strategy is acceptable. First, SMC says its top goal is to rapidly and successfully move away from the Russian-built RD-180 engine as ordered by Congress.

“We prioritized ensuring mission success over the risk of only having a single provider for a short period of time,” said Brig. Gen. Donna Shipton, vice commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, in the April 28 statement.

SMC provided a more in-depth explanation of its decision-making on risks in a response to RAND’s questions:

“The Launch Enterprise’s top priority is mission success. In addition, the guidance from Air Force and DoD leadership, the White House Staff, and Congress was to urgently end the use of the Russian RD-180. Accordingly, when developing our acquisition strategy, we prioritized ensuring mission success over the risk of only having a single provider for a short period of time (i.e., an Assured Access to Space Gap). Phase 2 involves transitioning our most critical payloads to new launch systems, ending the use of the Russian engine. We deliberately focus Phase 2 execution on mission assurance to sustain 100% mission success but will work to minimize the risk to Assured Access to Space to the maximum extent practicable.”

Second, Air Force acquisition head Will Roper says the the NSSL program’s focus on two future contractors is driven, in part, because the Air Force doesn’t have enough money to fund more launch providers.

“I think in a perfect world, we absolutely would continue with more providers — just because this is an emerging market where there are a lot of areas for technologies to be developed,” he said April 29. “If  money were no option, I would love to continue research and development and launch, and start Phase Three R&D of the program early. It’s just merely a funding constraint for us, with all the competing priorities.”

Roper said he also agreed with RAND’s finding that a third provider would help discourage foreign entries to the market.

But he also agreed with the study’s findings that the market might not be able to sustain more than two NSSL providers in the long-term. Indeed, RAND recommended that in the long-term the Air Force should “make prudent preparations for a future with only two U.S. NSS-certified heavy lift launch providers, at least one of which might have little support from the commercial marketplace.”

“I’m glad that they agreed with our assessment that the market can only support two providers long term. We believe that based on our market research, and they have held that. So that’s good to know,” he said. “It’s also good to know that they found that whoever is awarded a phase two contract is going to need access to legacy launch systems to avoid near term gaps.”

Space Force within weeks will choose two out of four contestants — Northrop Grumman, United Launch Alliance (ULA), SpaceX, and Blue Origin — for Phase II NSSL contracts (under a 60/40 split) that will lock up all national security launches from 2022 through 2026, representing billions of dollars. Congress fully funded Space Force’s request for request for $432 million in RTD&E, and $1.2 billion in procurement for the NSSL program in the 2020 defense appropriations act.

RAND suggested that the Space Force could lower the near-term risk of a rocket gap “by exercising options under its Phase 1A contract or by negotiating contingency clauses in its Phase 2 launch vehicle contract, or by otherwise supporting three launch service providers through the 2022–2025 time frame.”

Triezenberg said the study found two other risk factors: potential cost increases, and the potential for a future launch failure.

“There’s nothing I see in the market that says there’s going to be this thriving commercial industry that’s going to help them keep launch costs down. So I warned them about that,” she said. “And then of course, this is still rocket science. Every time you light one of those rockets up, you better make sure you’ve done all your mission assurance activities.”

But there were limitations to RAND’s study. Triezenberg said they didn’t get enough cost data from the Air Force to analyze whether there will be enough money to mitigate the risks they found. The authors cautioned, “that there may not be enough resources right now being allocated to launch that would enable the Air Force to mitigate all three of those risks to an acceptable level. And so that’s the conversation where we’re having now with the Congress and Air Force leadership.”