ORLANDO, Fla. — United Launch Alliance’s years-long delays with its new Vulcan rocket have flipped the script for national security missions, making SpaceX the new reliable provider.
The mission to launch a GPS satellite was the second originally awarded to ULA but transferred to SpaceX under the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 contract.
Now another two of those missions have swapped from ULA to SpaceX, although the Space Force has said ULA will get back two future missions previously assigned to SpaceX.
“In NSSL Phase 2, the ULA Vulcan program has performed unsatisfactorily this past year,” he wrote.
“Major issues with the Vulcan have overshadowed its successful certification resulting in delays to the launch of four national security missions.
ORLANDO, FL. SpaceX is now the new dependable supplier for national security missions after United Launch Alliance’s years-long delays with its new Vulcan rocket changed the course of history.
At 1:37 p.m. on Friday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched the GPS III-7 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40, further emphasizing the shift to Elon Musk’s company at the expense of ULA’s bottom line. m. On board the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which is based in the Atlantic, the first-stage booster made a downrange recovery landing for the fourth time.
The second, a GPS satellite launch, was initially given to ULA but was later given to SpaceX as part of the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 contract. Both the December 2024 launch and Friday’s launch were moved from ULA’s Vulcan to Falcon 9 due to a protracted delay in ULA’s replacement certification for its Atlas V and Delta IV class of rockets.
Actually, the GPS III-7 mission is the eighth of ten satellites that Lockheed Martin is building to expand the U.S. S. . GPS capability while in orbit. Additionally, it is a component of the Space Force’s expedited mission timeline for national security missions, which sees payloads reach space less than three months after the decision to go, as opposed to the typical turnaround time of up to 24 months.
“It provides another example of the Space Force’s capacity to execute high priority launches in a short amount of time, indicating the ability to react to emergent constellation requirements as quickly as space vehicle readiness permits,” said Space Force Col. Jim Horne is the senior material leader for the Assured Access to Space program’s launch execution.
As per the Space Force, the most recent GPS satellites are eight times more resistant to jamming and three times more accurate than the 38 that are currently in orbit.
In both missions, the Department of Defense had to switch to SpaceX because they wanted to launch GPS hardware that was more effective and less prone to interference.
ULA was initially supposed to receive 60% of the assignments under the NSSL Phase 2 contract, which included task orders for five years, spanning from 2020 to 2024. Vulcan was expected to carry all of those, and its initial launches were scheduled for the summer of 2022.
The last round of task orders, however, put 26 missions on ULA’s plate compared to SpaceX’s 22 due to Vulcan’s numerous delays. However, the Space Force has stated that ULA will regain two upcoming missions that were previously assigned to SpaceX, even though another two of those missions have been switched from ULA to SpaceX.
Out of those 26 missions, ULA has only successfully flown one so far, and that wasn’t aboard a Vulcan. Instead, one of ULA’s few surviving Atlas V rockets, which took off last summer, had to be used.
The original goal of ULA, a 2006 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, was for Vulcan to launch in the middle of 2020. However, COVID, the purchase of engines from Blue Origin, customer payload delays, and even a fiery test stand incident caused it to decline for almost four years.
As part of ULA’s efforts to obtain national security certification, it made its first flight in January 2024 and did not take off again until October of the same year. However, that certification wasn’t made until March 2025 because of a solid rocket booster motor that detached during the second flight.
Currently, Major Gen. says the first national security launch on Vulcan won’t happen until at least July. Stephen G. Purdy, Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration acting assistant secretary.
Earlier this month, Purdy, a former commander of Space Launch Delta 45 at Patrick Space Force Base, expressed concerns to the U.S. government about ULA’s delays in written testimony. S. The Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.
“The ULA Vulcan program has not performed well in NSSL Phase 2 over the past year,” he wrote. The Vulcan’s successful certification has been overshadowed by serious problems, which has caused four national security missions to launch later than planned. The slow adoption of Vulcan has affected the accomplishment of Space Force mission objectives, even after the retirement of the very successful Atlas and Delta launch vehicles. “”.
Only five of the Space Force’s nine necessary orbital requirements have been approved for Vulcan, making its certification currently only partial, Purdy said. While government employees have been more involved in technical and program management, he did note that ULA has increased its “engineering resources and management focus to resolve design issues.”.
Purdy stated that USSF-106 will be ULA’s first national security launch on Vulcan. Navigation Technology Satellite-3, the payload, is en route to geostationary orbit. It was developed by L3Harris and is financed by the Air Force Research Laboratory. It is a possible GPS substitute. It was one of two task orders totaling $337 million that ULA received in 2020. The other, the USSF-51, was launched on an Atlas V last summer.
The company’s share of the next pie shrank as a result of ULA having to deal with a backlog of Phase 2 contract missions. SpaceX, not ULA, will receive the majority of the Phase 3 contracts, which will total $13 billion over the next five years, according to a Space Force announcement earlier this year. Of the 54 scheduled missions, 28 (52 percent) would go to SpaceX. ULA receives just 19 missions, or 35 percent, whereas Blue Origin, a newcomer, receives seven, or 13 percent.
Purdy addressed what he believed to be ULA’s marching orders along with other commercial providers that have failed to deliver to the government, and he confirmed that ULA had already lost out on some Phase 3 contracts due to the Vulcan delays.
“To show (me) that they are implementing the acquisition principles required to deliver capabilities at speed, on cost, and on schedule, the prime contractors for these programs need to re-establish baselines, create an accountability culture, and restore the trust deficit,” he stated.
In the meantime, ULA is resuming its launch activities, scheduling just its second mission of the year—a commercial launch for client Amazon—using one of its remaining Atlas V rockets. The second mission for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, an internet satellite constellation that seeks to rival SpaceX’s Starlink system, is scheduled to liftoff no earlier than June 13 after the first mission was launched in April.
This year, SpaceX has completed 65 flights with its Falcon 9, 44 of which were from the Space Coast.
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