Tory Bruno Joins Blue Origin

Blue Origin announced today that Tory Bruno is joining them as head of their new National Security Group.  Until Monday, Bruno was the President and CEO of United Launch Alliance (ULA), which is a Blue Origin competitor as well as a customer for Blue’s BE-4 engines.

This week’s surprising moves in the rocket industry began on Monday with Lockheed Martin and Boeing issuing a joint press release that Bruno was departing ULA and John Elbon would become interim CEO. ULA is a 50-50 joint venture between the two companies.

The press release said Bruno was pursuing “another opportunity,” but with no hint from ULA or Bruno as to what it was. Today the space community found out.

Welcome to Blue Origin, @torybruno. We share a deep belief in supporting our nation with the best technology we can build. Tory brings unmatched experience, and I’m confident he’ll accelerate our ability to deliver on that mission. Glad to have you with us. https://t.co/lBXOGwkKhE

— Dave Limp (@davill) December 26, 2025

Thanks Dave. We are going to bring important, innovative, and urgently needed capabilities to our Nation. Can’t wait to get started. https://t.co/ErUZE9lWbi

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) December 26, 2025

Bruno spent 30 years at Lockheed Martin developing strategic missile systems before joining ULA in 2014 as President and CEO.  It was a pivotal time in the U.S. rocket business that among other things required ULA to design and develop a completely new all-U.S. rocket to replace the Atlas V that relied on Russian engines.

Bruno decided to design the new Vulcan rocket to focus on high performance in-space capability, especially for national security satellites headed to high orbits, instead of reusability like SpaceX and Blue Origin. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was already launching Falcon rockets in 2014 when Bruno took over ULA. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin was close to launching the first small, suborbital New Shepard rocket powered by BE-3 liquid oxygen-liquid hydrogen engines, but the orbit-capable New Glenn, with BE-4 liquid oxygen-liquid methane engines, was still on the drawing boards.

Thus Bruno’s 2014 initial selection of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines for Vulcan came as a surprise both because of Blue’s lack of experience and the novelty of liquid oxygen-liquid methane engines at the time. Some wondered if the deal would endure, but a contract was signed four years later.

Vulcan, New Glenn, and the BE-4 engines all took longer to develop than expected, which is not uncommon in the rocket business. As 2025 comes to a close, ULA has launched just three Vulcans, and Blue only two New Glenns.   Vulcan has received the all-important certification to launch national security satellites while New Glenn is still working on it.

New Glenn just launched two NASA cubesats, ESCAPADE, towards Mars.  NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman offered his congratulations to Bruno on X (using his personal account @rookisaacman).

Congrats!

— Jared Isaacman (@rookisaacman) December 26, 2025