The evolved expendable launch vehicle: tough decisions to assure access to space

Air & Space Power Journal, Summer, 2006 by Gregory E. Wood

Editorial Abstract: With the recent phaseouts of multiple medium/heavy space-launch vehicles, the evolved expendable launch vehicle (EELV) will soon become the nation's only vehicle able to insert capabilities into space and replenish them. However, the future EELV faces serious challenges. Major Wood contends that only a determined effort to maintain multiple providers, foster indigenous propulsion sources, and share civil-military technology will prevent potentially critical program delays and reduced effectiveness of space missions.

SINCE OPERATION DESERT STORM, the joint operational arena has recognized space as having vital strategic and tactical military significance. Assuring our access to space and having a responsive space-launch capability are key to success in all aspects of spaceborne operational capabilities, including communications, weather, navigation, positioning/timing, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. With the recent phaseout of Atlas II/III, Titan II, and Titan IV, the evolved expendable launch vehicle (EELV) has already taken over for previous medium-through-heavy space lifters. The Air Force will fully transition from the last remaining "heritage" launch vehicle, the Delta II, following launch of the final global positioning system IIR satellite in 2008. The EELV will then become the nation's only space enabler, assuring accurate placement of our critical space assets so they can provide new or augmented capabilities--or replenishment of current capabilities.

The US Space Transportation Policy of 6 January 2005 states that the United States "must maintain robust, responsive, and resilient U.S. space transportation capabilities to assure access to space [and that] for the foreseeable future, the capabilities developed under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program shall be the foundation for access to space for intermediate and larger payloads for national security, homeland security, and civil purposes to the maximum extent possible." (1) The EELV is part of a space-lift modernization program of the Department of Defense (DOD) whereby the government contracts for launch services from two providers: Boeing, which builds the Delta IV family of boosters, and Lockheed Martin, which builds the Atlas V family. This article summarizes the EELV program's history and current status, introduces some program challenges to maintaining launch success and assured access, and provides recommendations to better support our war fighters.

Background and Program History

Based upon recommendations from the Space Launch Modernization Study (otherwise known as the Moorman Study), the National Space Transportation Policy of August 1994 directed the development and implementation of a plan for evolving current expendable launch systems. (2) Plan development took place in October of the same year, and Congress appropriated $40 million for space-launch modernization. Following release of a "request for proposal" in May 1995, Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas (now the Boeing Company) were selected in December 1996 to continue with the preengineering and manufacturing-development-studies phase, each receiving $60 million to refine its concepts. The intent called for selecting one provider that better met the goal of reducing launch costs by at least 25 percent while meeting requirements for war-fighter operability.

In November 1997, the Air Force foresaw what it considered a dramatic increase in the commercial-launch market. The service believed that both the commercial-launch industry and the government would benefit from developing a partnership whereby the government would spend less money to purchase launch services, while launch contractors would have permission to sell their services in the commercial marketplace to make up for--and perhaps exceed--the difference in revenue. Contractors would invest their own resources for design, manufacturing, and launch infrastructure and would lease launchpads as well as facilities from the government. Therefore, instead of awarding a $1.6 billion contract to one EELV contractor, the government awarded two separate contracts, each for an initial investment of $500 million, to Lockheed Martin and Boeing in June 1998. Boeing would conduct 19 launches for $1.38 billion, and Lockheed Martin nine launches for $650 million.

Under this new partnership, the Air Force began purchasing launch services instead of actually taking possession of launch vehicles. The government now pays a contractor to place the payload in a specified orbit rather than actually buying flight hardware. Additionally, instead of operating launchpads and supporting facilities, it leases them to launch-service providers responsible for day-to-day operations even though the facilities reside on Air Force bases.

This arrangement, which represents a dramatic shift in the conduct of the launch business, produced effects felt throughout Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). The Air Force moved from the traditional role of contractor oversight to a new concept of insight into contractors' processes. The act of taking a step back from the launch process and leaving details of daily operations to the launch providers has considerably restricted--in some areas removed--the government's control over this process. Mandatory inspection points during booster production disappeared since the Air Force no longer bought the hardware, and AFSPC saw its role at the launch sites diminished. Oversight of hardware and protection of launchpad resources no longer resided with the launch squadrons.