More Bad News for Space Launches

Last September, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report about concerns with the Air Force’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program.  Now, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is expressing more concerns about EELV.  According to a January 31, 2012 Congressional Quarterly (CQ) article, “Arizona Sen. John McCain, ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, in a Jan. 27 letter to the Air Force secretary, said the government should develop its own price estimates for the booster cores of the Expendable Evolved Launch Vehicle (EELV) based on certified data provided by the contractor, United Launch Alliance (ULA) and its subcontractors. He added that the Pentagon should use its own analysis — and not the contractor’s — to determine how many booster cores to buy.”  All of this is troubling considering that a fact sheet by Vandenberg Air Force Base states that, “EELV is designed to improve our nation’s access to space by making space launch vehicles more affordable and reliable.”

The EELV program budgets have quadrupled since the Pentagon allowed Boeing and Lockheed to merge their launch business into a single monopoly provider, the United Launch Alliance (ULA), in 2006.   Despite this historic cost increase, on January 27, 2012, the United States Air Force announced its intention to award another $19 billion sole source contract to ULA.

The Air Force is choosing to continue down this path despite repeated warning signs from GAO, which only three months ago stated that “Program officials, recent launch studies, and the prime EELV contractor all cite a diminishing launch industrial base as a risk to the mission success of the program,…” The report also stated that, “The 2010 Launch Broad Area Review—which DOD officials cite as support for the proposed block buy approach—also relied, in part, on the 2009-2010 ULA data and analysis to conclude that the launch industrial base needs stability.  Although the ULA survey of its supplier base covered the appropriate topic areas for such a review—for example, financial stability and production operations—our analysis determined the survey was neither designed nor administered in a manner consistent with sound survey methodology practices, and in some cases, survey results presented to DOD could not be linked back to the survey questions.”

EELV is bad for taxpayers and space launches.  Sen. McCain may have said it best when he noted in the CQ article that “’ In my view, relying on the very contractor that would most benefit from large-scale block-buy combination to purchase EELV booster cores for information determining how many of these items the Air Force should buy and for how long it should buy them gives rise to a conflict of interest,’”

Allowing the ULA merger muddied the competitive waters, leaving DOD with single, monopoly launch provider.  Now, with a $19 billion sole source award, taxpayers are even more at risk.  The warning signs were there, the Pentagon chose to ignore them.