Frank Kendall

WASHINGTON: It’s not officially official, but the head of Pentagon acquisition, Frank Kendall, says the Treasury Department has not found any reason for sanctions to be applied against the United Launch Alliance.

“The preliminary indications from Treasury (Department) are that they do not apply,” Kendall told reporters after a lunch address to the Washington Space Business Roundtable.

The possibility of sanctions agains the national security launch behemoth was raised by Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. McCain is furious that Russia is benefiting from the American purchase of Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines. They are integral to the Atlas V system’s ability to loft huge satellite payloads into orbit with great reliability and at relatively reasonable cost.

And NPO Energomash, the engine’s builder, recently reorganized, putting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and other sanctioned individuals in positions of authority. That is why Treasury took another look at the issue of possibly imposing sanctions.

“These folks are on the sanctions list, and if the Department of the Treasury comes back and says there’s a problem with that relationship, then we have to work with the Congress and others to determine a way ahead,” Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves, head of Space and Missile Systems Center, said last Friday. If Treasury did find a case for sanctions then the consequences would be severe. “If we’re not supposed to be flying the RD-180s, they’re grounded.”

If Rogozin and others are in positions of authority after the reorganization why might Treasury not rule that sanctions should be imposed? “The requirement is ownership — more than 50 percent ownership,” Kendall said, “and control. It does not appear that, so far, either of them apply.”

This probably will not deter McCain from pressing for a legislative prohibition against use of roughly half of the 18 RD-180s the Air Force says are needed to get payloads into space until new rocket systems from SpaceX, ULA and, perhaps, Blue Origin would be certified safe to send hugely expensive and critically important satellites into space with the kind of reliability that ULA has demonstrated with its close to 100 near-flawless national security launches.

You can be certain SpaceX owner Elon Musk is unlikely to stop lobbying lawmakers for a switch to his Falcon 9 rockets.