Air Force Skips Competition for Pair of NRO Missions

The Air Force plans to award a sole-source contract to ULA for two Delta IV Heavy NRO launches. Mike Gruss writing for SpaceNews:

In its announcement, the Defense Department said it plans to award a formal contract for the first mission, known as NROL-82, later this year for a 2020 launch. It also plans to award a contract for the second mission, known as NROL-91, in late 2017 with a tentative launch date of 2023. Because NRO payloads are classified, very few details about the launch is publicly released.

There are a few obvious reasons the Air Force would go with a sole-source contract:

  1. Falcon Heavy hasn’t flown yet, and won’t be certified for a bit.
  2. ULA has made clear that they will keep flying the Delta IV Heavy as long as there is demand for it, but they want to produce the cores up front before transitioning their production lines to Vulcan.
  3. The satellites might need the bigger fairings of the Delta IV Heavy, or vertical payload integration, which SpaceX doesn’t offer.

This doesn’t seem like a big deal or a surprise, at all. Damn expensive, though, with a contract value that rounds to $1 billion.