Veto would complicate phase-out of Russian engines

Ledyard King | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – Efforts to stop using Russian-made engines on rockets carrying U.S. military satellites have run into trouble because of partisan battles over Pentagon budgeting and the terrorist detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Language to continue the phase-out of the RD-180 engines by the end of the decade is part of a defense authorization bill that President Obama has threatened to veto. His reasons: The bill also contains Republican provisions that would prevent Obama from closing the prison camp in Cuba and would try to sidestep automatic “sequestration” spending cuts at the Pentagon.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said last week that GOP lawmakers are being "irresponsible” in seeking to exempt defense programs from the cuts while the rest of government — including the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency — must abide by them.

It’s “certainly not the most effective way to provide for the national defense of the United States,” Earnest told reporters.

Obama’s threat to veto the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act comes as lawmakers are pressuring the Air Force to ramp up competition in the satellite program and limit the use of RD-180s — proposals the Pentagon supports. The engines have powered dozens of launches by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The measure would allow ULA to buy four more Russian engines — up from five now. The company has for years launched all national security satellites for the Pentagon. Its Atlas V rocket uses the RD-180.

But the authorization bill also is designed to spur competition between United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, the upstart aerospace firm that uses a domestically produced engine for its Falcon 9 rocket capable of delivering some national security payloads into orbit. SpaceX recently became the only other firm to win Air Force certification for the work.

Under the bill, the $1 billion annual payment that United Launch Alliance receives under its arrangement with the Pentagon — SpaceX calls it a subsidy — would end by 2019. At that point, ULA would have to begin factoring the payment into its bids, a requirement that SpaceX officials say would make their company even more competitive.

Air Force officials have relied solely on ULA for nearly a decade to carry national security spy hardware into orbit. The alliance celebrated its 100th launch earlier this month, when an Atlas V carried a Mexican communications satellite into orbit from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

But the landscape has changed since ULA launched its first satellite for the Pentagon in 2006.

SpaceX has emerged as a viable and aggressive competitor, and it's eager to show it can launch satellites for a fraction of the cost when the next round of bids is submitted in the coming weeks. In addition, increasing tensions between Moscow and Washington over Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Syria have prompted lawmakers to phase out use of the RD-180.

Those efforts have been led by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., who said earlier this year that continuing to buy the engines would send “hundreds of millions of dollars to (Russian President) Vladimir Putin and his cronies.”

If ULA runs out of those engines too soon, it also could run out of the time and money it needs to develop a rocket powered by new American engines. ULA chief Tory Bruno said that could produce the same monopolistic environment the Pentagon wants to eliminate, except that SpaceX instead of ULA would be handling all the launches.

"Without those engines, we are unable to fly Atlas in the national security marketplace," Bruno told reporters this month. "So that would take the workhorse of what has put two-thirds of the nation's most critical capabilities in orbit out of that market, and really almost kill competition before it's had a chance to get started."

ULA also operates a Delta IV rocket powered by U.S. company Aerojet Rocketdyne’s RS-68 engine. But the bulk of ULA's satellite launches for the Air Force have used the Atlas V.

Bruno also said the four new RD-180 engines the defense bill would provide isn't enough. He said the company needs 14 more to bridge the gap until its new, domestically produced Vulcan rocket is ready.

The bill (as well as existing law) allows the secretary of Defense to waive the restriction and grant ULA permission to buy more Russian engines if it's necessary "for the national security interests of the United States” and Congress is notified.

On Friday, ULA learned the Air Force had rejected its latest request for more engines.

Contributing: James Dean, Florida Today, and Lara Seligman, Defense News