The air force released a final request for proposal (RfP) for GPS-III launch services on 30 September to cover launch vehicle production, mission integration, and launch operations for the satellite mission set to start in 2018. Five engines that were approved for ULA’s use by Congress previous year had already been assigned to other missions, and were not available for use in a bid for the new Global Positioning System launch, Bruno said.
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The ban stems from Russia’s invasion of Crimea in March 2014.
It took SpaceX several years of rigorous inspections and a lawsuit to earn the right to bid for United States military satellite launches.
The congressional ban does not affect RD-180 engines used for NASA and commercial missions, but whenever ULA taps its current RD-180 inventory for non-military flights, it can not order a replacement for later use on a military missions. In response to recent Russian aggression, particularly Moscow’s annexation of Crimea past year, lawmakers in the fiscal 2015 defense budget banned the use of Russian RD-180 rocket engines for military satellite launches after 2019. Though this year’s defense spending bill allows the ULA to use four of the engines, the measure has not yet been signed into law, leaving ULA out of options.
ULA has been the sole satellite launcher for the Pentagon until the latter made a decision to introduce competition for secretive satellite launches to cut costs.
“Without those engines, we are unable to fly Atlas in the national security marketplace”, Bruno said. The Air Force put more emphasis on prices and not experience or performance, he said.
“ULA remains fully committed to supporting America’s national security missions with world-class launch services”, ULA’s statement said.
“We look forward to working with the Air Force to address the obstacles to ULA’s participation in future launch competitions to enable a full and fair competition”, Jessica Rye, a ULA spokesperson, told Bloomberg in an email.
ULA is retiring the basic version of its other rocket, the Delta 4, because it is more expensive than the Atlas 5. “Now that we have a commercial and competitive marketplace, if I can’t bring Atlas into that market, you actually don’t have a competitive commercial marketplace”.
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ULA does build another rocket, the Delta IV, which is powered by USA company Aerojet Rocketdyne’s RS-68 engine.
