Bruno Touts Vulcan’s Unique Capabilities as it Awaits Certification

ULA’s new Vulcan rocket continues to await DOD certification so it can launch national security satellites. A faulty part in a nozzle of one of Vulcan’s solid rocket boosters marred the rocket’s second flight last year and delayed two National Security Space Launch missions that were supposed to launch in the fall.  ULA now is ready to go as soon as DOD gives the word.  In the meantime, it is getting ready for a launch of its venerable Atlas rocket with a commercial payload for Amazon’s Project Kuiper.

Created in 2006 as a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, for over a decade the United Launch Alliance (ULA) was the only heavy-lift launch services provider for DOD with its Delta and Atlas rockets. ULA sent many NASA spacecraft into orbit and beyond as well.

Vulcan is replacing both Delta IV and Atlas V. The final Delta IV Heavy launch was just about a year ago and production of Atlas V ended in 2024.

Bitter sweet. The final Atlas V is making its way through the factory. There are 16 AV missions to go. They will all be built this year, making more room for #Vulcan rate production pic.twitter.com/loYE8yV9da

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) June 12, 2024

ULA’s dominance of the U.S. heavy lift launch market ended with the entry of SpaceX into the marketplace in the mid-2010s.  SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets have eclipsed ULA in recent years. None of ULA’s rockets are reusable.

Speaking to reporters at the SATELLITE 2025 conference yesterday, ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno explained why he designed Vulcan the way he did.  Vulcan is aimed not so much at the commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) market where many Falcons go, but at “exotic” orbits required for the national security sector.

“That was our speciality coming into Vulcan. It’s a personal interest of my own to support national security, especially when it was clear to me that no one else would do that type of architecture.

“Every other rocket is designed to be optimized for LEO operations [not GSO — geostationary]. So in that space we are not only able to do things that other people don’t easily do, we do them less expensively. …

“[For] direct injection to GSO, we are actually higher performance at less cost. That’s our spot. We’ll continue to be the most competitive there simply because the whole rocket was designed around that, to be optimum for that.” — Tory Bruno, ULA

For example, Vulcan’s Centaur V upper stage is very maneuverable and can remain in orbit attached to the satellite for long periods of time instead of detaching shortly after reaching orbit as is typical with other rockets. “If I have longer duration, I can do unusual trajectories that would obfuscate where my destination is” and “multiple giant orbital changes” are possible.  “It’s 10-100 times more thrust, so what would take a spacecraft a week or two to do can be accomplished in minutes or hours if you’re still attached to the stage.”

That being said, ULA is going after the “addressable” part of the commercial market, too. Many of SpaceX’s launches are for its own Starlink broadband Internet satellite system so ULA can’t compete for those, but it does have a large order for Atlas and Vulcan launches of Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which will be a Starlink competitor. In 2022, Amazon bought a record number of launches from ULA, Europe’s Arianespace, and Blue Origin to launch the constellation of more than 3,000 satellites.

ULA’s backlog of 70 launches through 2028 includes 47 for Project Kuiper.

ULA’s Vulcan, Arianespace’s Ariane 6 and Blue Origin’s New Glenn are all brand new heavy lift rockets just coming online now. Vulcan and Ariane 6 each have launched twice, and New Glenn’s first flight was in January. SpaceX’s Starship is in the testing phase, but Bruno doesn’t expect it to be much of a competitor to Vulcan because its main purpose is launching a lot of mass to LEO, not to the high energy orbits that are Vulcan’s speciality.

Bruno is confident Vulcan has a robust future, but getting it certified is the first step.  DOD requires two successful launches of a new rocket before putting its most precious and expensive satellites aboard.  Vulcan’s first launch in January 2024, “Cert-1” (the first certification mission) was perfect, but Cert-2 in October had a hiccup.

Vulcan comprises a central core and Centaur V upper stage built by ULA with solid rocket boosters (SRBs) on each side built by Northrop Grumman. As can be seen about half-way through this video, something goes awry on one of the SRBs. The nozzle came off. Despite the anomaly, the core stage corrected the trajectory and put the test payload exactly where intended.

Vulcan during the “observation” seen during ULA’s Cert-2 mission this morning. Watch how the rocket moves to adjust after the flash.

???? – @NASASpaceflight
???? – https://t.co/uzKGo20deK pic.twitter.com/5z3vXxDwhY

— D Wise (@dwisecinema) October 4, 2024

Bruno said it happened so soon after liftoff that pieces fell on the ground near the launch pad and were recovered. They also used ships to retrieve both SRBs from the ocean to compare them.  It quickly became apparent the problem was a defective insulator in that SRB’s nozzle. Looking through the “trimmings” from the production process for that insulator versus others, he said the difference “just stood out night and day” and allowed them to expeditiously screen the other parts, although testing continues to ensure there are no future surprises.

ULA has provided DOD with all the required documentation and completed all requirements outlined by the U.S. Space Force and is awaiting a go-ahead to launch USSF-106 with Navigation Technology Satellite-3. It was supposed to have launched before the end of 2024 as was USSF-87, two Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) satellites.

Although he didn’t explicitly connect the dots, in a talk this morning at an event hosted by Punchbowl News Bruno made the case for President Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense shield. Vulcan could be used to launch space-based components of Golden Dome. He repeated many of his points from yesterday, but his advocacy for Golden Dome was much broader, based on his long career in building rockets not just for putting satellites in space, but for missile defense.

Skeptics see a massively expensive and technically challenging set of land-, sea-, air- and space-based systems that need to be built, but Bruno argues many of the pieces are in place or soon will be — the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) system, and sea-based AEGIS system already exist and the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) is in development.

More of those are needed in more places, but what’s missing is space-based directed-energy weapons to counter maneuvering hypersonic weapons in particular.  “Now is the time. We can do the Golden Dome. We need to. The threat environment is completely different than it was [during President Reagan’s SDI]. And thank God we have got all the tools in our hand right now. We can have this very quickly.”

His views differ from those of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) who was on a previous panel.  “In theory it sounds great, I would love to snap my fingers and we would have this magnificent system” but adversaries might respond by increasing their stocks of ICBMs and accelerating development of hypersonic glide vehicles. “We should really think through what this means for nuclear proliferation and our own safety. Is this going to make us safer?”