The United States should pick either the Boeing Co. or Lockheed Martin Corp. to launch government satellites, rather than “underfunding” both, a congressional report says.
The current tag-team approach to making sure the United States can put communications and spy satellites in space quickly may be counterproductive, the House Appropriations Committee said in a report made available Thursday.
“Put simply, the committee believes fully funding one contractor may be a wiser approach to assured access than the current approach of underfunding two contractors,” the panel said in a report accompanying a $416 billion defense measure it approved for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.
Boeing, Lockheed and the Air Force had no immediate comment. The government plans to spend as much as $5 billion for satellite launches through the end of the decade.
Atlases and Deltas
The Air Force currently encourages Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed to maintain its Atlas 5 family of launch vehicles and Chicago-based Boeing its Delta 4 family.
It has been willing to spend extra to keep both companies in the business to spur competition and have a backup on hand if one launch vehicle is grounded, for instance after a failure.
But both companies — respectively the Pentagon’s No. 1 and No. 2 ranking suppliers — have complained about losing money on the so-called Evolved Expandable Launch Vehicle, or EELV, program amid the poor market for commercial launches. The rocket families were originally envisioned as serving both commercial and government clients.
Three Boeing rocket launch units remain suspended from launching any government satellites under sanctions imposed last July for illegally obtaining more than 25,000 documents from Lockheed during bidding in 1998 for an initial EELV contract.
New strategy planned
The U.S. Air Force is expected to announce a new acquisition strategy for the EELV program as early as next week. In the absence of a strong commercial market, the service’s EELV costs are expected to jump as much as 50 percent over the next few years.
Peter Teets, the Air Force’s under secretary for space, has argued that competition between Boeing and Lockheed in launching is important for U.S. national security.
“Our thinking is that there will probably be some form of sustainment contract for both families of vehicles,” he told an industry group on Dec. 2. This could involve a “winner take more than loser” kind of sharing, he said at the time.
But the Appropriations panel said it was wiser to invest in launch reliability than launch backup, “given the extraordinarily high cost and importance of satellite payloads.”
“The committee is concerned that by maintaining two ‘standing armies’ without adequate funding, the government could hurt launch reliability,” it said.
“Also, with few available launches divided between two contractors, contractor personnel are not able to maintain as high a level of proficiency, again potentially affecting reliability,” the report said.