If you're not familiar with the world of military satellite launches, a lot has been happening regarding the subject over the past few months. The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has been in charge of conducting such missions since 2006, but the Pentagon has opened a competition on the matter.
It all started with the Obama Administration imposing sanctions on Russia due to the crisis in Ukraine. As a result of these sanctions, the United States placed travel restrictions on certain Russian individuals and officials and also placed a moratorium on exports and imports to and from Russia. This posed an issue for the ULA because Russia supplied them with rocket engines that they used to launch their Atlas family of rockets. These rockets were responsible for conducting the military satellite launches for the US Air Force.
Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, then challenged the ULA and spoke before lawmakers, urging them to disallow any further importation of the Russian rocket engines that the ULA uses. After about a month of debate, the government ordered that the ULA must look elsewhere for rocket engines, which became a foregone conclusion after Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the country would no longer supply the US with their rocket engines if they are to be used for military-related launches.
Although the ULA still has a stockpile of the Russian rocket engines, the Pentagon opened the military satellite launch market to competition. For months, Musk has been advocating for his company to conduct such launches because they have much experience with space launches (they have a contract with NASA to conduct commercial resupply missions to the ISS as well as with other companies to put satellites into orbit) and because their American-made rockets, engines, and other parts would save American taxpayers at least $1 billion each year. Musk was previously infuriated with the 'monopoly' on these national-security related launches.
"SpaceX is not saying that these launches should be awarded to us," said Musk back in April in regards to the issue. "If we compete and lose, that's fine, but why were they not even competed? That just doesn't make sense," he added in this Bloomberg Businessweek article. The famed entrepreneur got his wish today after the Pentagon's announcement, and SpaceX is expected to secure regulatory approval this year to launch smaller military payloads.
Musk cited a congressional report that documented the average cost of an Air Force national security launch to be almost $380 million per launch, compared to SpaceX's cost of under $100 million. If SpaceX can secure the permission to launch the smaller military payloads and prove their effectiveness, the US could have a new space company in charge of conducting military satellite launches.
You can read more about the competition for military satellite launches in this Wall Street Journal article.
