Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will introduce a bill that repeals a provision in the 2016 omnibus spending bill allowing continued purchases of RD-180 engines for national security missions.
It was expected. While backstabbing is a time-honored tradition on politics, vengeance also is. McCain took the backroom modification to the omnibus bill as treason and thus this might have became personal. I don't know how the rest of Congress will take this. In any case, ULA will already have ordered more RD-180 and have them in stock. Thus, he might be able to negotiate a hard date for no RD-180 use, like forbidden for any mission planned for NET 2020 launch.
IMO in the next round of appropriations any new (or re-instated) ban on RD-180 will again be nullified. Just like happened last time.
I understand what you think. But I look at it from a political view. Being overuled like that means a serious loss of power. And if politicians are obsessed about something, it is power. I the very issue he took as a personal flag can be so manipulated, then his influence plummets and he becomes irrelevant. I think he might even vote against an omnibus "must-pass" bill if they do this again. Politics are very cut-throat.
i think is whole story is so funny on the one side you have senators with monetary incentives to let ULA buy whatever they want,on the other you have cold-war veterans that don't want to be dependant on russia under no circumstancei'm only on mcCain's side because at least he has principles, although on alot of other subjects he's a total nutjob...it's always a good thing when a politician shows that cooperations can't buy every politicians opinion
When it rains it pours.ULA has bought itself more trouble besides just the RD-180 possible ban reinstatement.http://spacenews.com/u-s-air-force-looks-at-ending-ulas-launch-capability-payment/
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 01/28/2016 04:08 amWhen it rains it pours.ULA has bought itself more trouble besides just the RD-180 possible ban reinstatement.http://spacenews.com/u-s-air-force-looks-at-ending-ulas-launch-capability-payment/No, I don't think so. IMO USAF will eventually report that terminating ELC early is a breach of contract and therefore early termination will not happen.I did however like the way how McCain stated that ULA receives $800 million "to do nothing". That is not going to sit very well with folks like Bruno and Collins.
No, I don't think so. IMO USAF will eventually report that terminating ELC early is a breach of contract and therefore early termination will not happen....snip...
So ULA declined to bid the mission, because they knew they couldn't beat SpaceX's price. That move has apparently brought down the Air Force's ire because they pay them to always be prepared to fly (translated: at least bid on it). What ULA should have done is bid the Delta-IV, which would have been legal. They still would have lost the bid to SpaceX (same result - nothing changes), but they wouldn't be having to deal with the anger of their only customer and bringing down the wrath of Senator McCain and his allies. Sometimes I wonder just what the hell the people at the top of ULA are thinking, or even if they actually are.
ULA may have shot itself in the foot with the GPS mission no-bid, then. The AF could argue that by no-bidding the mission, ULA itself terminated the contract.
Quote from: montyrmanley on 01/28/2016 12:11 pmULA may have shot itself in the foot with the GPS mission no-bid, then. The AF could argue that by no-bidding the mission, ULA itself terminated the contract.Do we imagine that somehow ULA failed to run this by their legal department and thereby inadvertently jeopardized an $800M contract? No way. If there had been any doubt, they would have thrown a few million $ at a losing bid just to cover their behinds and protect ELC.The Air Force is throwing Congress the predictable bone, "we're looking at it," meaning their procurement office is re-reading the fine print, and will come to the same conclusion ULA's lawyers did, ie there's no basis for temination. IMHO.
Quote from: Kabloona on 01/28/2016 01:00 pmQuote from: montyrmanley on 01/28/2016 12:11 pmULA may have shot itself in the foot with the GPS mission no-bid, then. The AF could argue that by no-bidding the mission, ULA itself terminated the contract.Do we imagine that somehow ULA failed to run this by their legal department and thereby inadvertently jeopardized an $800M contract? No way. If there had been any doubt, they would have thrown a few million $ at a losing bid just to cover their behinds and protect ELC.The Air Force is throwing Congress the predictable bone, "we're looking at it," meaning their procurement office is re-reading the fine print, and will come to the same conclusion ULA's lawyers did, ie there's no basis for temination. IMHO.Exactly. IMO, the thing is that they have already covered their proverbial behinds. ULA was very carefull to give TWO reasons for not bidding on the GPS launch:- We don't have an engine available courtesy of the Congressionally mandated RD-180 ban.- We don't have the right accounting system in place courtesy of USAF changing the accounting rules.When the stab at Congress fails they will still get away with the second argument IMO.
Quote from: woods170 on 01/28/2016 01:12 pmQuote from: Kabloona on 01/28/2016 01:00 pmQuote from: montyrmanley on 01/28/2016 12:11 pmULA may have shot itself in the foot with the GPS mission no-bid, then. The AF could argue that by no-bidding the mission, ULA itself terminated the contract.Do we imagine that somehow ULA failed to run this by their legal department and thereby inadvertently jeopardized an $800M contract? No way. If there had been any doubt, they would have thrown a few million $ at a losing bid just to cover their behinds and protect ELC.The Air Force is throwing Congress the predictable bone, "we're looking at it," meaning their procurement office is re-reading the fine print, and will come to the same conclusion ULA's lawyers did, ie there's no basis for temination. IMHO.Exactly. IMO, the thing is that they have already covered their proverbial behinds. ULA was very carefull to give TWO reasons for not bidding on the GPS launch:- We don't have an engine available courtesy of the Congressionally mandated RD-180 ban.- We don't have the right accounting system in place courtesy of USAF changing the accounting rules.When the stab at Congress fails they will still get away with the second argument IMO.Actually the second one if used as a reasoning will bite them. It was due to ULA receiving the ELC contract to do things that would lower the bid price. What they meant was that the did not track the charges and activities on this contract by launch so they were unable to disengage these charges sufficiently to then create a accurate bid. Another item is a little clause in every goverment contract that says that the contract can be terminated at any time by the government. And since this is a services contract and not hardware delivery the termination costs are only the severance packages for the employees as reported lay off. At most if they lay off everyone that works on the contract the termination costs would be no more than 25% of 1 year of funding or <$200M. if only 20% of the workforce is lay off (if they lay off more they won't be able to launch anything and ULA will be in default of all their other contracts) the termination costs are <$40M. So termination costs are likely to be only 5% of one year. Remember this is a cost plus contract so termination costs are simple and also very low.The problems are with the other contracts and if they reference having a ELC active as a requirement for contract fulfilment in the form of government provider services (even if it is ULA providing those swervices to ULA it is still being purchased by the AF and being then provided back to ULA). This last is the truly AF problem in early termination not anything else such as termination costs.The ELC is the sand upon which all the other AF contracts with ULA is built. Remove the sand and all of those other existing contracts will have to be renegotiated including the block buy. This is why they will likely not pull the plug this year or the next but they could still back the last year of the ELC up by one year for its end to be in 2018 vs in 2019 meaning opening up more flights to competition and renegotiation of the block buy reducing the total cores ordered count.