The House passed the FY2015 defense appropriations bill today (June 20) with the $220 million added to begin building a replacement for Russia’s RD-180 rocket engines intact.  Also today, the Obama Administration imposed sanctions against seven Ukrainians and, along with Europe, is readying other sanctions aimed at specific Russian economic sectors including defense.

The availability of RD-180 engines for the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) Atlas V rocket has come into question since the deterioration of relationships with Russia because of its actions in Ukraine.  The House now has passed both a FY2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA, H.R. 4435) and a companion FY2015 defense appropriations bill (H.R. 4870) that provide $220 million for the Air Force to begin a program to develop a U.S. liquid rocket engine to replace the RD-180.  The White House disapproves of the additional funding, arguing that it is premature to commit that much money while options on how best to obtain a new U.S. engine are still being evaluated, but there seems to be agreement that a new U.S engine is needed to end America’s reliance on Russia.   The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) also wants a U.S.-built engine and recommended $100 million in its version of the FY2015 NDAA (S. 2410).  SASC also adopted a McCain amendment that prohibits the purchase of additional RD-180 engines after the current contract expires.

U.S. national space policy requires that the government support two families of launch vehicles to ensure access to space, especially for national security satellites, in case one experiences a long hiatus because of a failure.  The Atlas V is one of the two (Delta IV is the other).  NASA and NOAA also use Atlas V and two of the three competitors for NASA’s commercial crew program (Boeing and Sierra Nevada) plan to launch their spacecraft using the Atlas V.

ULA insists that it is “business as usual” with Energomash, the Russian company that manufactures the RD-180s.  The question is whether the evolving situation in Ukraine and potential sanctions against Russia’s defense sector could disrupt that relationship.   ULA President Michael Gass said on Wednesday that the company is positioning itself to be able to respond to any eventuality.

Major media outlets including the New York Times report that a “senior administration official” briefed them today that the United States and Europe are readying tougher sanctions targeted against Russia’s finance, energy and defense sectors because of continued Russian involvement in Ukraine.   According to the reports, the administration is accusing Russia of covertly arming Ukrainian separatists and redeploying “significant’ Russian troops along the Ukrainian border despite a cease-fire declared by Ukraine today and ongoing negotiations between Moscow and Kiev on a peace plan.  The U.S. Treasury Department today imposed sanctions against seven Ukrainians who are viewed as separatist leaders.

Details of the potential sanctions against Russia’s economic sectors have not been made public.   President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Russian President Putin earlier this month that he risked tougher sanctions if Russia did not withdraw Russian troops from the Ukrainian border and end its support for Ukrainian separatists.  Although Russia initially withdrew some of it troops, they reportedly now are redeploying.

Five experts explained the utility of space-based systems to enhance Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) at a June 16, 2014 panel discussion hosted by the Secure World Foundation (SWF).

SWF Washington Office Director Victoria Samson explained that MDA is defined as “effective understanding of anything associated with the maritime domain that could impact security, safety, economy, and environment.”  MDA relies on a layered set of terrestrial, air-borne, and space-borne systems.

The panelists focused on the role of satellites in MDA, including optical and radar imaging satellites, especially Canada’s Radarsat-2, as well as satellites that carry receivers for the Automatic Identification System (AIS) created by the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

AIS transmitters provide a ship’s identity, location, speed, direction, and other data.   IMO regulations require AIS equipment to be aboard cargo ships of certain sizes that travel in international waters and on all passenger ships. Individual countries may have additional AIS regulations governing their coastal waters.  AIS itself is a terrestrial VHF system, but as panelist Guy Thomas explained, satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) are able to pick up AIS transmissions, leading to Satellite-AIS (S-AIS).

Thomas, co-founder of the C-SIGMA Centre, calls S-AIS the “game-changer” for its ability to “locate the good guys” and permit pattern-based analysis.   The idea is that the “good guys” allow themselves to be identified through AIS so when authorities are looking for the “bad guys,” the ships transmitting on AIS can be eliminated from the target list.  AIS was created as a collision avoidance and traffic management tool, he said, but it has expanded into many other uses including environmental protection, maritime resource protection, safety, commodities trading, and route planning.

The idea for S-AIS emanated from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.   At the time, Thomas was the Johns Hopkins liaison to the Naval War College and tasked to assist the Navy evaluate its maritime security.   He learned the United States lacked ways to detect ships off the coast, with the exception of warships, which have a unique signature.  For all the other maritime vessels, he was convinced that the AIS signals could be picked up by appropriately equipped satellites in LEO.

“I discovered that [at that time] there was only one satellite system in the world that met my requirements — ORBCOMM,” Thomas said.  He approached ORBCOMM with the idea and in 2006 six satellites equipped with AIS receivers, one of which was funded by the U.S. Coast Guard, were launched.  S-AIS “has been used dramatically in many different ways now,” he said and is provided by ORBCOMM as a commercial service (the Coast Guard no longer funds the satellite receivers, but does buy services).  Additional AIS-equipped ORBCOMM satellites have been launched since and six more are awaiting launch at Cape Canaveral on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.  The launch is currently scheduled for Friday (June 20).

John Mittleman, an engineer at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, pointed out, however, that despite the IMO regulations, AIS and other types of terrestrial ship-board transmissions that provide location and identification data are voluntary.   “The number of ships that may reasonably pose a threat to national security and economic security based on size, cargo-carrying capacity and ocean-going capability is well over 5 million,” and roughly “100,000 changes everyday are tracked [from] vessels based on voluntary broadcasts,” he said.

The key is separating vessels willing to identify themselves through AIS or other systems from those that do not and could pose a threat.   Boats that do not voluntarily transmit identification information and boats made of fiberglass or wood that cannot be detected by space-based radars are “dark vessels.”  Only the vantage point of space can provide a global perspective on maritime activities, Mittleman said, but it is a combination of observations from satellites, aircraft and other boats that narrow down where to investigate and when.

Maj. Charity Weeden, Royal Canadian Air Force and Assistant Attaché for Air and Space Operations at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, noted that Canada has maritime approaches from three oceans (Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic) and more than 150,000 miles of coastline.  “The existing gaps of knowing what is on the ocean approaches are starting to close,” she said, due to space-based solutions.  Among them is the launch of Canada’s Radarsat-2 in 2007, which helps provide “near real-time ship detection, tracking ice floes, detecting oil pollution, monitoring sea ice, and even determining wave direction, day or night.”  But the satellite’s average revisit rate is only 3 or 4 days. “The aim now is persistence,” she said.  The Radarsat Constellation Mission, which will consist of three satellites set to launch in 2018 that will work in tandem, will have daily access to 95% of the globe, up to four passes per day in the Arctic.  They will also have S-AIS. Weeden added that Canada and the United States share similar MDA commitments and should continue working together to maximize results.

Jon Huggins, director of the Oceans Beyond Piracy project of the One Earth Future Foundation, called MDA an essential element in addressing piracy while adding that “not everyone is in favor of more MDA.”  He cited a number of examples where ships do not want to be identified and choose, for example, to turn off their AIS systems in certain parts of the world.  “There were some reports that pirates were able to access certain types of AIS equipment, so a lot of ships were turning off their AIS systems that were transmitting in high-risk areas.”  Others prefer the freedom associated with anonymity such as when “you have an unapproved private security team, and perhaps an incident happens at sea that you may not want reported that brings liability issues as well as some reputation damage.”  Another example is ships that may briefly travel through war zones, but do not want to pay the higher insurance premiums required in those areas.

Bharath Gopalaswamy, deputy director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, focused on MDA in South and Southeast Asia and the need for international cooperation.  No single country has the resources to do it alone, he said, but he also identified a lengthy list of challenges, including “lack of shared training or conduct in maritime operations, limited maritime intelligence collection and sharing, limited patrol capacity” as well as a perception of the dangers of “a maritime arms race in the region.”  He added there are inadequate “crisis management mechanisms” among the nations in that region and two other challenges are “U.S. behavior in the region” and “the China factor.”  He did not address satellite or other types systems necessary for MDA, but rather the need for enhanced governance and security in that region.

Other panelists also stressed the need for international cooperation.  Regarding the space-borne contribution to MDA, a number of other countries are launching optical and radar imaging satellites and ORBCOMM is no longer the only satellite system equipped with S-AIS.  Thomas’ C-SIGMA Centre – Collaboration in Space for International Global Maritime Awareness Centre — was founded specifically to “foster wider cooperation and exchange in the use of and access to satellite based maritime surveillance information” on a global level.

Weeden pointed out, however, that satellites cannot do the MDA job alone.  They are an “enhancer,” but there is no one solution — an international, multilayered approach involving terrestrial, air- and space-borne systems is needed.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) President Michael Gass announced today that the company is initiating an advertising campaign to change misperceptions and correct misinformation as its Air Force customer fights a lawsuit filed by competitor SpaceX and controversy swirls over the future of the Russian RD-180 rocket engines it uses for the Atlas V rocket.

ULA builds and launches the nation’s two major launch vehicle families — Atlas V and Delta IV — that are primarily used for putting national security satellites into space.  NASA and NOAA also use those rockets.  The Air Force awarded ULA a sole-source block-buy contract for 36 rocket engine cores last year.  SpaceX filed a lawsuit against the Air Force in April arguing that it should have had a chance to compete for some of those launches.

The SpaceX lawsuit was one of three topics Gass wanted to discuss with representatives of the trade press at a media roundtable this morning in ULA’s Washington-area office.  Among the points he stressed were that SpaceX was not — and is not — a certified launch services provider for the Air Force even today and “was not a viable competitor” when the Air Force issued the Request for Proposals in March 2012.  Another key message was that ULA has more than 100 years of combined experience launching rockets — roughly 50 years each for the Atlas and Delta, which date back to the earliest days of the Space Age — versus newcomer SpaceX.   The national security satellites launched by ULA “save lives,” Gass emphasized, and experience counts to be sure they get into orbit when needed.

SpaceX not only wants to be able to compete against ULA for Air Force launches, but founder and Chief Designer Elon Musk argues that ULA’s Atlas V rocket should be discontinued entirely because it relies on Russia’s RD-180 engines.  National space policy calls for the government to support two families of launch vehicles to ensure access to space in case one requires a lengthy stand-down because of a failure.  Atlas and Delta are those two rockets today.  Musk wants his all-American Falcon to replace Atlas.

The future availability of RD-180s is a hot topic in Washington right now as the House debates the FY2015 Defense Appropriations bill, which would add $220 million to the Air Force budget to begin development on a new U.S. liquid rocket engine to replace it.   Gass made clear today that despite threats from Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin to prohibit RD-180s from being used to launch U.S. national security satellites, it is “business as usual” with the engines’ Russian manufacturer Energomash.   However, ULA decided to accelerate delivery of the RD-180 engines it already has under contract.   Five engines were due to be delivered in November, but now two will arrive in August and the remaining three in November.  The plan had been for six engines per year after that, but instead Energomash will deliver eight per year.  That means the contract will be fulfilled a year earlier and Gass expects savings because of the shorter period of performance.

Although he still has confidence in the supply of RD-180s from Russia, Gass said ULA wants to position itself for any eventuality.  Therefore it announced earlier this week that it has contracted with “multiple” U.S. companies to develop technical concepts and perform business case analyses for alternative engines.  He declined to say how many companies, who they are, or precisely how much they are being paid, but he said it was company money.  ULA expects to choose one design and supplier by the end of this year with the goal of having a new engine ready for launch in 2019.

Gass complained about widespread misperceptions and “misinformation” being spread about ULA.  Consequently, the company is launching an advertising campaign aimed at decision makers to “illuminate the contrast between ULA and SpaceX.”  The nation “has made mistakes in the past,” Gass said, and “it is incumbent on us to not let the nation make those same mistakes again.”