Getty McCain furious over Russian rocket engine provision Language in the omnibus spending bill would remove restrictions on buying them.

Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain ripped a fellow Senate Republican on Wednesday over a provision in the omnibus that removes restrictions on buying Russian-made rocket engines.

The Arizona Republican is furious with Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) for tucking a provision into the massive 2,000-page bill that allows defense contractor United Launch Alliance to keep buying Russian rocket engines — reversing language McCain championed in the National Defense Authorization Act that limited ULA to purchasing nine rocket engines.


“I can’t speak for him, nor do I give a damn,” McCain said of Shelby. “Why would I give a damn what he says?”

McCain was so angry over the Russian engine provision being added to the bill that he indicated he would oppose the entire $1.1 trillion spending bill.

He slammed Shelby and Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, for big-footing his committee’s bill “in the middle of the night in the worst, disgraceful fashion,” while never proposing an amendment on Russian rocket engines during debate on his defense policy bill.

And McCain said Shelby, a senior Senate appropriator, never approached him to negotiate on the language in the omnibus.

“Of course not, of course not, of course not. That’s not the way Sen. Shelby does business,” McCain said.

The language in the omnibus is the latest turn in the bitter battle between ULA, a joint venture of defense giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

ULA did not bid on the first competitive space launch between the two companies last month, saying that it had no rocket engines to use due to the restrictions included in the NDAA.

Shelby, whose state is home to ULA’s rocket-building facilities, argues the Pentagon wants to give ULA the relief in the omnibus to ensure that it has at least two rockets it can use to launch satellites into space.

The Air Force is developing an American-made alternative, but Pentagon officials have warned it may not be ready by the 2019 deadline set by Congress. The omnibus bill included an additional $144 million for developing the U.S.-made engine.

“The language included in the omnibus would reverse the reckless restriction put on the use of the RD-180, which undermines our national security,” Shelby said in a statement. “This language directly addresses the concerns of our nation’s military leaders who argue that there will be a multi-year gap in access to space for national security launches under current policy.”

But McCain has accused ULA of manufacturing a crisis to get the law changed by not bidding on the first military satellite launch. On the Senate floor Wednesday, he vowed to take up the issue again in next year’s defense authorization bill — threatening a “complete and indefinite” ban on Russian-made engines.

“This omnibus appropriations bill will send hundreds of millions of dollars to Vladimir Putin, his cronies and Russia’s military-industrial base as Russia continues to occupy Crimea and destabilize Ukraine,” McCain said. “We have sought to be flexible and open to new information, but if this is how our efforts are repaid, then perhaps we need to look at a complete and indefinite restriction on Putin’s rocket engines.”

