Subject: DoD Mission Model
From: thomsona@netcom.com (Allen Thomson)
Date: 1995/12/22
Message-Id: <thomsonaDK09z4.HrF@netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
A while ago,jbhopkin@ux5.cso.uiuc.edu (Joshua B Hopkins) asked,
>Does the US military actually plan to launch 20 satellites per
>year in the future?
As it happens, I have a couple of viewgraphs from a briefing
Gen. Moorman was giving around town in April last year which
contain the combined military and nonmilitary government mission
models for large ELVs (apparently identical equal to the Titan
IV, IV B and successors for the period in question), medium ELVs
(Atlas II and Delta II) and small ELVs (presumably Pegasus,
Taurus, etc). It also shows STS as running at 8/year through
2010, but I've omitted that.
There is a separate chart showing a commercial mission model
for MELVs and SELVs -- obviously more of a guesstimate.
Government ELV Launches in USG Fiscal Years (1 Oct to 30 Sep)
FY 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
LELV 5 7 4 6 3 4 5 4 2 3 2 3 2 2 2 2 3
MELV 12 12 10 15 10 17 12 18 18 14 14 14 15 16 11 12 12
SELV 9 4 4 3 4 4 6 4 4 5 5 6 5 5 4 4 6
One thing to be said about this table is that it's already
significantly incorrect, at least as far as the LELVs and SELVs
are concerned; I haven't checked the MELVs. In FY 94 and 95
there were 3 (two successful, one failure) and 3 T-IV
launches for a total of six rather than the twelve indicated.
So it looks as if DoD/NRO has orbited half the big payloads it
was expecting to as recently as two years ago. (Probably that's
where some of the famous 1.6 gigabuck stash came from.) Another
is that the 47-item buy of Titan IV /IV B was projected to be
used up right around the turn of the century, implying either a
follow-on order for T-IV, or a very optimistic outlook for
rapid development of its successor.
The SELV shortfall is obviously explained by the tough luck
those launchers have been having. In any case, I'd tend to
regard those figures in the model as guesses, given the
lamentably uncertain future of SELVs. The LELV and MELV numbers
should be more reflective of serious planning in 1994.
Just for fun, the commercial model is:
FY 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
MELV 5 7 6 11 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
SELV 3 2 5 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
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