The Pentagon is Now Free of Russian Rocket Engines After a Historic Launch
The US military has been working to wean itself off of the RD-180 engine for the past ten years.
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As national security missions switch to all-American launchers, United Launch Alliance launched a classified US military cargo into orbit on Tuesday for the final time using an Atlas V rocket, ending the Pentagon's reliance on Russian rocket engines.
At 6:45 am EDT (10:45 UTC) on Tuesday, the Atlas V rocket, powered by five strap-on solid-fueled boosters and a Russian-built RD-180 engine, took off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This was the 58th and last Atlas V mission carrying a US national security payload since 2007. It was also the 101st launch of an Atlas V rocket since the rocket's introduction in 2002.
On Tuesday afternoon, the US Space Force's Space Systems Command announced that the mission, code-named USSF-51, had concluded successfully. About seven hours after liftoff, the top-secret USSF-51 cargo was released by the rocket's Centaur upper stage, most likely in a high-altitude geostationary orbit over the equator. The precise parameters of the rocket's target orbit were not disclosed by the military to the public.
"What a fantastic launch and a fitting conclusion for our last national security space Atlas V (launch)," Space Systems Command's Walt Lauderdale, the director of the USSF-51 mission, stated in a news release following the launch.
"The diligence and commitment of our country's industrial base is evident in how well Atlas V has served our needs since its initial launch in 2007. We made it happen together, and because of groups like these, the launch business in our country is the most prosperous and successful in the entire globe."
The Final Farewell to RD-180
The debut Tuesday morning marked the end of an era that began in the 1990s when US government policy permitted Lockheed Martin, the Atlas V's original creator, to use Russian rocket engines in the vehicle's initial phase of development.
In the ten years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a general consensus that the West and the United governments should collaborate with Russia to protect its aerospace industry and keep "rogue states" like North Korea and Iran from employing its personnel.
The Atlas, Delta, and Titan rocket families had been in production since the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the Pentagon was currently replacing them with new rockets.
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In the end, the Air Force decided to develop the Atlas V rocket from Lockheed Martin and the Delta IV missile from Boeing in 1998. The more successful of the two designs, the Atlas V, had a Russian main engine and was slightly less costly than the Delta IV.
Following Tuesday's launch, NASA and commercial clients have scheduled 15 further Atlas V rockets to carry payloads, primarily for Boeing's Starliner crew spacecraft and Amazon's Kuiper network. April saw the 45th and last Delta IV launch.
Before SpaceX began performing national security missions in 2018, United Launch Alliance—a 50/50 joint venture formed in 2006 by the merger of Boeing and Lockheed Martin's rocket divisions—was the only contractor authorized to launch major US military satellites into orbit.
In an effort to challenge the Air Force's decision to give ULA a multibillion-dollar sole-source contract for 36 Atlas V and Delta IV rocket booster cores, SpaceX filed a lawsuit in 2014. The US government imposed sanctions on a number of high-profile Russian government figures, including Dmitry Rogozin, the country's deputy prime minister at the time and the latter head of its space agency, following Russia's military occupation and annexation of Crimea. This led to the commencement of the legal action.
Known for his aggressive but typically ineffective rhetoric, Rogozin threatened to stop exporting RD-180 engines used in US military operations aboard the Atlas V. That did not occur until after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, at which point it ultimately ceased exporting engines to the US. ULA possessed all the engines required at that point to launch all of its remaining Atlas V rockets. The Antares rocket by Northrop Grumman, which also employed Russian engines, was more severely impacted by this export embargo, necessitating the creation of an entirely new first stage booster using US engines.
The SpaceX lawsuit, the initial Russian military incursions into Ukraine in 2014, and the sanctions that followed signaled the beginning of the end for ULA's utilization of the Russian RD-180 engine in the Atlas V rocket. At maximum speed, the dual-nozzle RD-180, manufactured by NPO Energomash in Russia, produces 860,000 pounds of thrust while using liquid oxygen and kerosene as propellants.
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In 2021, Energomash shipped the last of its RD-180 engines to the US, bringing the total number of engines delivered to 122. The cost of each RD-180 engine was about $10 million when it was first ordered in quantity. A small number of RD-180s were manufactured by Energomash for ground testing purposes in Russia; however, they were never shipped to the US. After Lockheed Martin's Atlas III rocket was deactivated in 2005, six of its RD-180 engines were used to power Atlas V rockets into space.
The only issue with the RD-180 engine during its whole flight career was a very minor performance deficit on a commercial Atlas V launch in 2016. The engine has never failed on a launch by the US military. To cover the remaining backlog of Atlas V missions, which will probably span the remainder of the 2020s, ULA has fifteen additional RD-180 engines in stock.
A Time That Was Uniquely American
In 2015, ULA announced the construction of a new launch vehicle called Vulcan since the US military's reliance on Russian rocket engines was no longer politically viable and SpaceX was prepared to launch military satellites at a lower cost using an all-American, partially reusable rocket. Congress mandated in that year's National Defense Authorization Act that the Air Force move away from the RD-180 engine, which sparked a rush of Pentagon contracts to assist finance US rocket engine development.
After the Pentagon put out calls for bids for military launch contracts, SpaceX began to get contracts to launch spy platforms, GPS navigation satellites, and other payloads related to national security. The Pentagon said in 2020 that it would be purchasing dozens of launches in bulk from SpaceX, which possesses the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launchers, and from ULA, which has its new Vulcan rocket.
However, the maiden launch of the Vulcan rocket was delayed by several years, primarily because of issues with its BE-4 main engine, which was produced by Jeff Bezos' space business Blue Origin. Due to this, the Space Force, which assumed control of launch contracts from the Air Force, gave SpaceX a higher percentage of launch contracts than was initially anticipated. Due to Vulcan rocket delays, the mission known as USSF-51, which launched on Tuesday, was also transferred from the Vulcan rocket to an Atlas V flight.
According to a statement from Tory Bruno, President and CEO of ULA, "the Atlas family of rockets has played a pivotal role in the advancement of national security and space superiority since the 1950s." "We look forward to continuing a legacy of exceptional teamwork and collaboration with the US Space Force as we launch future missions for our national security partners aboard the Vulcan rocket, even though today marks the final liftoff of a national security space mission aboard an Atlas rocket."
January 8 marked the successful launch of the Vulcan rocket's first test flight. A second test flight is planned for mid-September. By the end of the year, the Space Force might authorize the Vulcan rocket to start launching real payloads for the military if that launch goes as well as the first one.
Blue Origin, on the other hand, is getting close to finishing the construction of its heavy-lift rocket, the New Glenn, which may make its inaugural launch later this year. Blue Origin will also be able to compete with ULA and SpaceX for at least some national security launch contracts after it ties together a run of successful New Glenn launches.