Spacelift Washington: USAF planning additional EELV funding

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Air Force is preparing a $350 million, multi-year package to supplement the $900 million development funds to keep alive the two EELV contractor families, according to sources and a published account in the Wall Street Journal Friday.

Sources tell this column that the package will be “in the range of $350 to $400 million initially” and will compensate Boeing and Lockheed Martin for the cost of maintaining the full range of EELV configurations now in existance. The rationale for the move, which has not yet been approved by DoD acquisitions chief Pete Aldrich, is to prevent either one of the contractors to withdraw from further EELV development, or to assure U.S. military space officials that both the Delta IV and Atlas V families will receive vehicle upgrades, enhancements, and other system investments until the two corporations can recoup their individual $1 billion investments in the EELV series.

A downturn in the commercial launch market in the wake of the Little Leo constellation collapse and a tighter market for telecommunications services has pushed profitability on the EELV line out into the post-2010 time frameWz3 industry analysts suggest. As a result, either Boeing or Lockheed Martin may be unable or unwilling to invest additional funds into the EELV. The Air Force move is intended to “shore up” the project and avoid further decline in U.S. launch service providers.

The Journal reported in its January 25th editions that an unspecified dollar amount would be proposed across the period from 2003 through 2010 as what the newspaper called a “bailout” of the contractors involved in EELV. Spacelift Washington was told by industry sources that the funding would be targeted to “maintain system viability; we’ll have to perform specific tasks to get that money”, a source told this column.

Of the two contractors, Lockheed has been awarded less flight contracts for military payloads than Boeing’s Delta IV. An additional EELV procurement package may move some of the “types of military satellites” now assigned to early Delta IV vehicles to Atlas V “in a later round” of USAF/DoD EELV launch contract awards, Spacelift Washington was told. Such a move would not be a permanent realignment of satellite payloads to Atlas. “Both vehicle types can fly these missions,” we were told late Friday.

In 1996 the Air Force awarded a split development contract package to both Boeing and Lockheed Martin to maintain two U.S. commercial expendable space launch builders. The awards, worth about $1 billion total, including launch operations contracts for the selected vehicle configurations, was supplemented by the individual firms’ own funds, which is believed to be about an additional $1 billion each.

Lockheed Martin chose in 1998 not to build a heavy lift launch capability at Vandenberg Air Base in California in a cost-saving move. Both launcher families can fly medium lift configurations from Vandenberg, and all vehicle configurations for all of the current Delta IV and Atlas V systems can launch out of Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida.

While the future of the EELV was being reshaped, a 120-day study of how NASA and the Air Force can jointly merge requirements for a future family of spaceplanes was close to wrapping up.

Details in our next column.