ULA’s Tory Bruno: Air Force Eyes Flexibility in Military Satellite Launches

Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, told SpaceNews in an interview published Wednesday that he thinks the competition in the market for military space launches “is good for the country.”

“We’re seeing a broadening of the lift industrial base,” he said.

ULA is one of the three companies the U.S. Air Force selected this month to develop rocket prototypes through other-transaction agreements.

Bruno said the service has started to look into the “flexibility” it might require in the future.

“One of the ways you get flexibility when you have uncertainty is to make sure you can still go to every single orbit, go there with all the mass you can take, and maybe ask for a little bit more,” he told the publication.

He said he believes that no missions under a competitive industrial base would go solely to a launch provider and would be carried out without backup.

“We need assured access to space if something happened to one of them,” he added.

Bruno also shared his views on the Launch Service Agreement, government launches and the geostationary satellite market.