The Air Force is open to negotiating a potential deal with United Launch Alliance (ULA) that would make the data and launch rights from its Atlas V rocket available to other companies.
“We may discuss it with ULA directly,” Assistant Air Force Secretary for Acquisition William LaPlante said Friday at an Air Force Association (AFA) breakfast event in Arlington, Va.
LaPlante said he doubted the service owned the data rights to the Atlas V because the Air Force procures the Atlas V as a launch service and when you procure a service, you “generally” don’t own the rights to the material being used.
“Let’s say we find out the government has limited data rights,” he said. “We still may go back to ULA and say ‘Let’s get in a discussion with you guys to make this thing available to others,’” should they want to bid for it.
LaPlante said the Air Force may have to go back decades to investigate whether the service has data rights to the Atlas V, and if so, how much it might have. He said the Air Force is currently investigating the data rights situations on the B-1, B-2 and F-15 as it explores sustainment solutions for those platforms.
“We’re going back to the ’90s and, in some cases, the ’80s to find out what were the arrangements with the contractors on the data,” LaPlante said. “Sometimes we find that we did (own the data rights), most of the time, we find we did not.”
An industry source with knowledge of the issue said the week of May 11 a team of Aerojet Rocketdyne [AJRD], Dynetics and Schafer Engineering inquired with the Air Force about “exploring” the future use of the Atlas V. Aerojet Rocketdyne is developing its next-generation AR-1 rocket engine and has proposed using it with the Atlas V, in addition to ULA’s next-generation propulsion system known as Vulcan.
Though there are engineering challenges involved with swapping rocket engines and launch vehicles, Aerojet Rocketdyne Vice President of Advanced Space and Launch Julie Van Kleeck told Defense Daily in a May 13 interview the AR-1 is “as close to plug-and-play as you can get” and that modest software changes would be needed to use the AR-1 with the Atlas, which Aerojet Rocketdyne is interested in for its low cost per launch.
ULA initially shot down hopes of Aerojet Rocketdyne getting access to the Atlas V. ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye on May 13 said the company holds the rights to build and launch the Atlas V and has no intention of selling or transferring them. She said ULA expects to launch Atlas V into the next decade as it works with customers to meet requirements and transition to Vulcan, which expects to produce its first flight in 2019 and full certification in 2022-2023.
Rye on May 15 reiterated her stance, saying ULA holds the rights to build and launch the Atlas V and has no intention of selling or transferring them (Defense Daily, May 13).
ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA].