Polskie Forum Astronautyczne
Człowiek i Astronautyka => Osobistości => Wątek zaczęty przez: Orionid w Marca 30, 2020, 02:34
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Edward Cleveland „Pete” Aldridge Jr. (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/aldridge.htm) został wyselekcjonowany w ramach DoD Obserwator (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/odod.htm) (1985).
1960 uzyskał tytuł licencjata inżynierii lotniczej na Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University.
1962 uzyskał tytuł magistra inżynierii lotniczej na Georgia Institute of Technology.
Zajmował różne stanowiska w Wydziale Rakiet i Kosmosu firmy Douglas Aircraft Co. w Waszyngtonie i Santa Monica.
1967 dołączył do personelu zastępcy sekretarza obrony ds. analizy systemów jako analityk badań operacyjnych, a następnie do 07.1972 pełnił funkcję dyrektora Strategic Defensive Division.
Był doradcą podczas rozmów o ograniczeniu zbrojeń strategicznych Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) w Helsinkach i Wiedniu.
07.1972-07.1973 pracował jako kierownik w półrządowej korporacji LTV Aerospace Corp.
07.1973-02.1974 był asystentem dyrektora biura budżetowego w Biurze Prezydenta Stanów Zjednoczonych w Waszyngtonie.
02.1974-03.1976 po powrocie do Departamentu Obrony pełnił funkcję zastępcy asystenta sekretarza obrony ds. programów strategicznych
03.1976-03.1977 był szefem biura ds. planowania i oceny, głównego doradcy sekretarza obrony w zakresie planowania i oceny programów sił zbrojnych USA i struktur wsparcia.
03.1977-08.1981 był wiceprezesem w National Policy and Strategic Systems Group w Systems Planning Corp. w Arlington w stanie Wirginia.
Aldridge odpowiadał za działalność korporacji w zakresie badań i analiz w obszarach sił strategicznych i konwencjonalnych oraz długoterminowego planowania strategicznego.
08.1981-06.1986 był podsekretarzem Air Force.
Dodatkowo odpowiadał za całościowe kierownictwo, nadzór i nadzór nad programami kosmicznymi Sił Powietrznych, w tym za starty i operacje orbitalne, a także za planowanie przyszłych możliwości kosmicznych.
Zainicjował drugą rakietę nośną, Titan IV, od Martin Marietta, składając w 1985 zamówienie na 10 pojazdów.
Kiedy wahadłowiec kosmiczny Challenger eksplodował podczas startu w następnym roku, wojsko amerykańskie mogło kontynuować zapewniony dostęp do kosmosu pomimo dwuletniego uziemienia wahadłowców kosmicznych.
Był członkiem załogi STS-62A Discovery (https://www.spacefacts.de/cancelled/english/sts-62a.htm) (pierwszego lotu wahadłowca z bazy SLC-6 w Vandenberg AFB) jako specjalista ładunku użytecznego – obserwator Sił Powietrznych.
Lot był pierwotnie planowany na 03.1986, następnie był kilkakrotnie przekładany i ostatecznie przełożony na lipiec.
Po katastrofie wahadłowca Challenger misję najpierw przełożono, a następnie całkowicie odwołano.
07.1986 wycofał się z załogi w związku z nominacją na stanowisko Sekretarza Sił Powietrznych.
09.06.1986-1988 był sekretarzem Air Force.
Był podsekretarzem obrony ds. zakupów, technologii i logistyki.
1989–1992 pełnił funkcję prezesa działu systemów elektronicznych w McDonnell Douglas Corporations.
1992 został prezesem LTV Aerospace Corporation.
2002 pełniąc funkcję Podsekretarza Obrony ds. Zamówień, Technologii i Logistyki, zatwierdził zakup samolotów F-35 przed zakończeniem krytycznych testów rozwojowych i stwierdził, że F-35 (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II) „wyznacza nowe standardy postępu technologicznego”
06.2003 został wybrany do rady dyrektorów firmy Lockheed Martin.
2004 przewodniczył komisji prezydenckiej, której zadaniem było określenie głównych priorytetów w badaniach kosmicznych w świetle nowej inicjatywy prezydenta USA George'a Busha.
http://www.spacefacts.de/bios/astronauts/english/aldridge_edward.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/a/aldridge.html
https://www.worldspaceflight.com/bios/a/aldridge-e.php
https://www.kozmo-data.sk/kozmonauti/aldridge-jr-edward-cleveland.html
https://www.astronaut.ru/as_usa/text/aldridge.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Aldridge_Jr.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Aldridge_Jr.
https://weebau.com/astros_us/aldridge_edward.htm
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM152960
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Wywiad
Wright: All of these requirements and agreements had been set in place before you moved into that position.
Aldridge: Before I moved in. This was in 1978. I believe Jimmy Carter wrote a presidential directive that the Space Shuttle is going to be at—and what we were told is that he didn’t write the actual 55 flights a year, but it would meet all the demands of all the users. That was 1978. Well, in 1981—in fact, in April of 1981 we had the first Shuttle flight. At that point, it was clear that some of these statements of capabilities were going to be way lacking, that the turnaround time was not seven days, it was much, much more than that. Of the five orbiters, only four had been bought, two of which were so heavy they couldn’t meet the DoD demands. We only had two orbiters that could meet the DoD weight and size demands. The cost was not one third of the cost of an expendable; it was more likely equal at best, and possibly much higher than that.
In April when we first started to see this, we began to worry that well, maybe we were not going to meet the demands of the Department of Defense. We had a requirement for 12 flights a year from the Shuttle. Our estimates of what we were seeing as turnaround time said you might be able to fly 24 flights per year, but 12 to 18 was more likely the number. If it was going to be at the lower end, or even at 18 per year, we were going to take 12. We had a hard requirement to fly 12 flights. This meant the civil and commercial space business was not going to be as robust as we thought it was going to be. We with national security priority could preempt the launch of a commercial satellite in order to get a national security satellite up. It was highly uncertain whether or not any of the commercial or civil programs were going to have much viability if the orbiter flight rate was in the 12 to 18 per year.
So we started getting worried. Well, in 1983 I decided—it was my decision—looking at the flight rate, what our demand was, what the performance of the Shuttle was at that point in time—by then we had flown four flights, and much more robust data that was showing it wasn’t going to be anywhere close to 55 flights per year. NASA was still touting it was going to fly 24. It could fly 24 with the four orbiters. That was [NASA Administrator] [James] Jim Beggs who made that announcement.
Well, I decided we ought to not terminate expendable launch vehicles. In 1978, we were to start phasing down the expendable launch vehicles, because we were no longer going to use them. All the production of the expendable launchers showed an end date that was going to be probably in the 1986 period. We were flying three different [expendable launch system] vehicles, a Delta, an Atlas, and a Titan. The production lines were showing a tail-off of those. All the satellites that we had that were flying on the expendable launch vehicles, because the Shuttle bay was different and the loads on the Shuttle and the acoustics were so much different that we had to redesign all the national security payloads to fit in the Shuttle bay and to take the Shuttle environment. Since we were paying by the linear foot rather than the diameter, all the national security payloads got short and fat, because that’s how they charged us.
Side note. If you now look at the Titan IV, you’ll notice it has a great big bulbous nose. That was because as we went from the Shuttle back to the expendables, we had to put the new satellite on the old booster. So it was short and fat, and that’s why you have a big bulbous nose on the Titan IV.
In ’83, I went to the Secretary of Defense and said, “I believe we should not terminate the production of expendable launch vehicles until the Shuttle can prove itself, that it can fly at least 24 flights per year, and it can meet the performance demands of the Department of Defense, therefore we should keep a number of expendable launch vehicles continuing.” He agreed, went to the President [Reagan], and the President agreed, and so we put together a budget to send to Congress that would continue the Titan production line for five more years, and we would buy two vehicles per year for the critical payloads that the Titan launched. We also converted an old Titan II ICBM [Intercontinental Ballistic Missile] to a space launch vehicle that could launch the very small satellites that we didn’t want to have to try to integrate a little satellite into the Shuttle bay. It should not launch small satellites all by itself, it was far too expensive. But we needed weather satellites launched, so the Titan II launched from Vandenberg. We converted 14 of those to launch weather satellites. Our plan was laid out, and NASA fought it.
Wright: Very bold statement, when so many of the people who were in the development stage of the Shuttle said that so much of what they wanted for the Shuttle, for the orbiter, was dictated by the Air Force, not what they [NASA] wanted.
Aldridge: Well, see, it’s very interesting. It is correct. The Shuttle bay was designed to fit the Manned Orbiting Laboratory [MOL], which is a program by the Air Force that was going to put men in space in a reconnaissance satellite. The other issue was that they wanted to have the ability to abort from orbit, so if you got into orbit, had engine failure, and you couldn’t reach full orbit but had to come back and land, you wanted to have enough maneuverability in the Shuttle to maneuver about 1,000 miles off from where you were to where the launch site was by the time you made one orbit. So those wings had to be built on it.
The Shuttle bay size and the launch weights were dictated by the Department of Defense. But if they could not fly the Department of Defense payloads, then the economic rationale that was dictated why we wanted the Shuttle and why we wanted it to be the exclusive launch vehicle went away. Without the Department of Defense, they had no Shuttle. They had to accommodate DoD requirements. That’s sure enough what happened.
But in the idea of continuing the expendable launch vehicle program, NASA got very upset about it. Jim Beggs in particular, because he saw that as a move by the Air Force—and the Air Force basically represented the Department of Defense, the Air Force was responsible for launching all Department of Defense satellites, which included Navy and Air Force and NRO. He got very upset and tried to, through his contacts with the Congress, to get Congress to deny us the funding for the continuation of the expendable launch vehicles. He testified he saw it as a ploy of the Air Force to remove itself ultimately from the Shuttle and go back to all expendable launch vehicles. Therefore, the result of the Air Force and DoD going off of the Shuttle, in his mind, is it made it less viable for commercial launches of satellites, which were then planned to fly on the Shuttle.
So he, through his congressional contacts, continued to stress that this was not the right thing to do. We had quite a battle between ourselves and NASA. Finally, the national security adviser, I think it was Bud McFarlane contacted the Secretary of Defense, and NASA, and me—I represented the Department of Defense at this time as Under Secretary of the Air Force—to get together and come to a compromise. So we did.
We met in the Old Executive Office Building. Jim Beggs and I. Jim kept saying, “You guys can’t get off the Shuttle,” and I said, “We will sign up that we will buy at least one third of all the missions the Shuttle can fly in any given year, we’ll guarantee at least one third.” In fact, we were showing probably half, because Jim was saying still 24 flights a year. At that time, we were saying 12. But that’s another story. So we said, “We’ll buy one third of them, guaranteed.” He said, “Okay, but I also want you to help us work on the next generation of launch vehicles.” I said, “We’ll do that.” The Shuttle follow-on. We would determine what the fair pricing policy was at this particular time.
The reason for that, again I got to diverge a little bit. What was happening between the Air Force and NASA at the time was the Air Force had signed up with a certain set of interface requirements of their satellite in the Shuttle. If there were some things unique, like the clampdown mechanisms that were unique for that satellite against the Shuttle, the Air Force would pay for it. All other non-unique things in the Shuttle bay, that would be a NASA obligation, and therefore our pricing policy was based on the linear foot, any unique things associated with the satellite. Then other non-unique things, that was NASA.
Well, about every week NASA kept throwing these non-unique requirements over to the Department of Defense. It was angering a lot of people. We put in our budget a certain price to fly on the Shuttle, and all of a sudden NASA says, “No, the cost just went up 10%.” This antagonism of the pricing policy and the antagonism of the expendable launch vehicle versus Shuttle had a very high tension rate between the Department of Defense, the Air Force, and NASA.
[...]
https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/AldridgeEC/AldridgeEC_5-29-09.htm
Edward (Pete) Cleveland Aldridge
Government official; Astronaut; Company executive
Area Leadership, Policy, and Communications
Specialty Public Affairs and Public Policy
Elected 2013
Mr. Edward Cleveland Aldridge Jr. was former Secretary of the Air Force, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Chief Executive Officer, and Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. He was scheduled to fly as an astronaut in the late 1980s but his mission was canceled in the wake of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. He served in many senior U.S. Defense Department and defense industry positions, including director of the National Reconnaissance Office, 1981-1988, undersecretary of the Air Force, 1981-1986, and secretary of the Air Force, 1986-1988. From 1989 to 1992 he was president of the Electronic Systems Company division of McDonnell Douglas, and later, CEO of the Aerospace Corporation. He retired from his position as undersecretary of defense in 2003 and accepted President George W. Bush's appointment to chair the Commission on the Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy. He is also a former board member of Lockheed Martin and Sybase Inc. Awards include being a recipient of the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award and Distinguished Public Service Award, and the Wright Brothers Memorial Award.
Last Updated Jul 2025
https://www.amacad.org/person/edward-pete-cleveland-aldridge
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Aldridge On the Issues
By Edgar Ulsamer and Edgar Ulsamer July 1, 1986
Growing up some thirty years ago in Shreveport, La., right across the river from Barksdale AFB, Edward C. “Pete” Aldridge, Jr., learned, as he puts it, to “look up” to the US Air Force and the leaders who made it great. The Shreveport teenager’s admiration begot a dream—some time, in some form, to join the Air Force team. In August 1981, that dream came true when he joined the “team” as Under Secretary of the Air Force. Over the intervening five years, Mr. Aldridge became one of the most respected and longest-tenured occupants of that office.
His outstanding performance was not lost on the Defense Department’s leadership and the White House. On April 7, following the resignation of Russell A. Rourke for weighty personal reasons, President Reagan named Mr. Aldridge the seventeenth and newest Secretary of the Air Force, making him the civilian head of the service that he had first learned to admire three decades ago. At this writing, Senate confirmation of his new assignment is pending.
The prospect of leading what he calls the greatest Air Force in the world puts a king-size lump in the throat of this normally unflappable, erstwhile aerospace engineer and defense analyst: “It is almost more than this person can endure.” Pete Aldridge seems tailor-made for the high office that he has just assumed. He holds a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from Texas A&M and a master of science degree, also in aeronautical engineering, from Georgia Tech.
For a number of years following his professional schooling, he held engineering and, eventually, management slots in the aerospace industry. For five years thereafter, he served as a Defense Department systems analyst and as an advisor to the US SALT I team in Helsinki and Vienna. After a year as senior manager with an aerospace company, he was named a senior management associate in the White House Office of Management and Budget. Next came two years as a senior OSD executive charged with oversight of strategic programs and then an assignment as principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the field of planning and program evaluation of US military forces and force structure. During the Carter era, Mr. Aldridge served as a vice president in a respected think tank responsible for a range of defense planning and analysis functions. The incoming Reagan Administration quickly picked him for the job of Air Force Under Secretary.
The Priorities Are Right
In an interview with this writer, the new head of the Department of the Air Force posed a rhetorical question: “What is Pete Aldridge going to do about the priorities [of the Air Force that have evolved over the past five years of the Reagan Administration]?” The answer, he said, “is nothing. The priorities are right, the Air Force is on a roll, and I don’t see any reason to change the winning game plan that we came up with.” The top priority that he inherited from his predecessors and the one that he views above all others as sacrosanct is “people. Keeping quality people certainly will always be at the top of my list. You can have the greatest, fanciest aircraft in the world, but if you don’t have quality people to maintain them and fly them, they won’t do you much good.”
Ranking right behind this imperative, in Secretary Aldridge’s view, are “readiness and sustainability.”
The fact that he sees no intrinsic need for reordering either general or mission-area priorities doesn’t mean there won’t be adjustments, he emphasized. Two factors that come into play here involve pending drastic budget cuts, on the one hand, and structural changes that are likely to ensue from the Administration’s implementation of the findings of the Blue Ribbon (Packard) Commission on Defense Management, Secretary Aldridge acknowledged.
In the first instance, he harbors few illusions. Maintaining the rate of budget growth experienced by the Air Force over the past five years is not in the cards that are being dealt by Congress. “At best, we might be able to sustain a very limited real growth, and it’s going to be tougher to get the military manpower to man our forces,” he warns. But there is a mitigating factor: “We are starting from a solid base, [because over] the past five years, we were able to take our budget from $42 billion to about $100 billion.”
Concomitantly, over the past five years, USAF’s flying hours shot up by twenty-two percent, aircraft mission-capable rates by forty-four percent, sorties per pilot by fifteen percent, air-to-air capability by sixty-five percent, strategic airlift capability by twenty-five percent, and “force-multiplier” space programs by a staggering 384 percent. The contention by congressional malcontents that the $1 trillion that the country has spent on national security over the past five years has bought nothing is, he asserted, “garbage.”
The “down side” of freezing defense spending is that “the threat hasn’t gone away, and that is what should set our requirements, not how much money” the country is willing to spend on defense, he points out. It follows that some tough choices lie ahead. “The programs that we started over the past few years in anticipation of continued high growth [are in for] close scrutiny.” As a consequence, “Sick programs are not long for this world.” A case in point is PLSS, the precision location strike system (see “In Focus . . . ” p. 24 of this issue).
Any program that has “the slightest degree of problem” in terms of cost, schedule, or performance or that lacks a rock-solid base in terms of requirements will be looked at closely and critically and may be headed for the chopping block, he emphasizes.
The Impact of the Packard Report
The impact of the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on the current structure of the Air Force, while not fully sorted out, is likely to be significant, Secretary Aldridge suggests: “It is clear, if you put Packard [meaning the provisions of the Commission] against the current structure of our program management, that there will have to be some changes.” The Defense Department and the Air Force are looking at the alternatives for adapting current resource allocation and program management functions to the matrix drawn up by the Presidential Commission. For the time being, however, “we don’t know yet what the changes should be.”
What, in the Pentagon’s view, does seem clear, however, is that the management functions ought to be carried out on two distinct tracks, he. suggested. The resource allocation function flows from the President to the Secretary of Defense and then to the service Secretaries, with the basic objective of fitting essential programs into a given budget and then funding them. The program management function starts where the resource allocation task leaves off. The Packard Commission’s matrix notwithstanding, “somehow we will have to continue to manage the resource allocation process,
and somehow we will have to manage our programs.”
Secretary Aldridge suggested that the Packard Commission’s recommendations in areas affecting military organization and command structure—in the main, the call to broaden the authority of the unified commanders—require no drastic changes on the part of the Air Force. The reason is that the Air Force already “does an excellent job of supporting the CINCs.”
The Packard Commission, he added, might have overlooked some of the cooperative measures already undertaken by the Air Force in terms of CINC support, with the result that “we are in better shape than the Commission gives us credit for.” He pointed out that the Air Force’s four-star general officers, several of whom serve as CINCs, participate fully and actively from start to finish in the development of the program objective memorandum (POM) that in effect is the Air Force’s five-year plan. He stressed that this participation extends from the early stages of the POM process—when requirements are juxtaposed with the budget bogeys and “disconnects,” meaning critical omissions, are resolved—to the stage when adjustments necessitated by cuts are made and then all the way to formulation of the complete document that is delivered to OSD. The Air Force component commanders, he stressed, also “are doing an excellent job” in supporting their CINCs. As a result, Secretary Aldridge sees no compelling need for major adjustments in the way the Air Force operates in the joint-service arena.
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A Partial Move to Prototyping
One of the first tangible effects on the Air Force of the White House’s decision to implement the Packard Commission recommendations involved the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program, according to Secretary Aldridge. The Commission found that in the case of such critically important weapon systems as a new air-superiority fighter, the need for maximum performance dictates the introduction of truly state-of-the-art technology. The reason is that the “benefits of the new technology offset the concomitant risks.” The Packard Commission suggested further that the only consistently reliable means for gauging the trade-off between risks and benefits is by building prototypes that “embody the new technology.”
Based on this guidance, the Air Force decided to “make the Advanced Tactical Fighter a model program for implementing the recommendations of the Packard Commission,” Secretary Aldridge emphasized. This means prototyping—or “fly-before-buy”–of competing aircraft to demonstrate key technologies as well as “our ability to maintain cost control,” he added.
Other factors that persuaded the Air Force to change the ATF program to a prototype format include the unprecedented degree of integration associated with this weapon system: “This is going to be the most integrated aircraft ever built in terms of engines, airframe, avionics, structure, and aerodynamics” and thus justifies a “head-to-head flyoff.” The approach will be similar to that taken with the YF-16 and YF-17. The engine/airframe integration of these competing prototypes was evaluated in the 1970s.
The restructuring of the ATF program is scheduled to lead to the award of two contracts that require both competitive flying and ground avionics prototypes. The flyoff of the two competitive flying prototypes is to get under way in 1990, which will put the ATF into the air two years earlier than previously planned.
But the fly-before-buy decision on ATF does not signal a wholesale shift of Air Force development programs toward the prototype approach, Secretary Aldridge cautioned. In the case of some other programs, “dual-sourcing” will be applied, he suggested. In yet other instances, the “very good lessons” learned from the B-1 program, such as baselining and multiyear procurement, will serve as the paradigm, he said. This might apply in some measure to the ATB (advanced technology, or “Stealth,” bomber) program, he hinted.
The Importance of Revolutionary Technologies
While the new Secretary plans, in general, to follow the policies and management philosophies developed and honed by his immediate predecessors in concert with the military heads of the Air Force, he won’t rule out “changes in what football coaches call ‘tendencies.’ My tendencies might lean more toward revolutionary, rather than evolutionary, approaches to weapon systems or concepts.” He explained that he might “tend to decide in favor of [approaches] that exploit the advantages of [advanced] technology by taking a great leap forward.” In terms of specifics, he cited in this context his support of “ATB, ATF, SDI, the National Aerospace Plane, the C-17, and technologies coming out of [Gen. Lawrence A.] Skantze’s Project Forecast II” high-technology roadmap.
He cautioned, however, that he planned to apply his preference for highly leveraged technologies selectively: “Out of a hundred decisions, I might do that seventy percent of the time, but in the other thirty percent, that might not make sense.” He is fully aware that decisions in favor of long-term revolutionary performance gains can take their toll in short-term force structure. By going for the quantum leap embodied by ATF, for instance, the consequences in the current budget environment might well be that “we can’t build as many F-15s and F-16s [as we wanted because we have] to pay for the longer-term investment.” Given a choice between fixing up existing weapon systems by grafting on evolutionary improvements or taking the step toward revolutionary gain, “I will probably tend to support a smaller force, but a much more capable one that [gives us] all the force multipliers we need.”
In this context, he cited the importance of looking for technologies that beget massive performance gains, such as the combination of stealth and autonomous standoff weapons: “Technology now supports a broader role for standoff weapons. It’s ridiculous to put man in a threatening environment when there is a smart [unmanned] weapon that can do the job effectively.” Remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs), he suggested, “have a place in our Air Force. We ought to be pushing them with a certain amount of vigor.”
Similarly, Secretary Aldridge came down four-square in favor of advanced spacelaunch systems, especially the National Aerospace Plane (NASP). In his view, the best long-term solution to the challenge of spacelaunch economics is NASP, a derivative of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s “Copper Canyon” program, as “opposed to the Transatmospheric Vehicle,” or TAV, approach, a technically less-ambitious concept: “I support the long leap forward” over TAV promised by NASP.
The Imperative of Assured Access to Space
Because of his intimate involvement with oversight of space operations, Secretary Aldridge is extremely concerned over the current, simultaneous stand-down of both the Space Shuttle and Titan 34D. It is imperative, he avers, that the US build up its “spacelaunch posture to a [level] that is greater than what existed before the accidents.” He inveighed against “ever again letting ourselves get into a situation where for eighteen months we don’t have a way to get into space with a major portion of our launch force.” As the new Secretary of the Air Force, he promised to “push for a launch posture that is more robust, more flexible, and more capable than what we had” before the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger and its crew in January and of a Titan 34D in April of this year.
This restoration and buildup of the national space-launch capabilities should and will be undertaken “very cautiously,” he said, adding that there is a “difference between the Shuttle that has people on top compared to Titan.” While there were two Titan failures in a row, they were the first in eighteen years involving launches of this system from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. One of the failures involved the launch vehicle’s solid-rocket motor, the first accident of this type in the history of the Titan system. The other failure—in August of last year—was totally unrelated and involved the Titan’s liquid-fuel engine.
These two unrelated failures, Secretary Aldridge explained, do not indicate “any design flaws,” but suggest the need to look for procedural and quality problems: “We probably should have been checking a little more thoroughly.” Nevertheless, there are no fundamental reasons to doubt that the Titan 34D is “a very reliable system [whose overall] reliability, in fact, is about ninety-six percent.”
With the Shuttle Orbiter fleet down to three vehicles—of which only two are capable of accommodating the heavier DoD payloads—”we simply don’t have enough capacity and [as a result] will be backlogging payloads to a point where we are going to have thirty or so Shuttle rides before we can start up again.” This backlog, he predicted, will have to be worked off in part with expendable launch vehicles (ELVs). In addition, Secretary Aldridge supports acquisition of a replacement Orbiter. This need is made especially compelling, he said, because if one of the two existing Orbiters that can handle the heavier DoD payloads were to stand down, “we would really be in deep trouble.” He considers it essential that “we rebuild our Shuttle fleet to a point where we won’t have to worry too much if one Orbiter is down.”
The fundamental, long-term lesson from the current launch paralysis is “that we can’t allow ourselves to depend on a single spacelaunch system” and instead must commit to a mixed-fleet concept. As the decision time draws nearer on the joint NASA/DoD Space Transportation Architecture Study (or STAS, which limns US spacelaunch requirements beyond 1995), “we need to look at both manned systems to replace the Shuttle and unmanned systems to replace our CELVs,” meaning complementary expendable launch vehicles of the Titan 3413-7 type that possess a Shuttle-bay-equivalent payload capability. Key objectives of the STAS include creation of a mixed fleet of launch vehicles to increase flexibility and “robustness” and to bring about an order-of-magnitude decrease in the cost of delivering payloads into space.
Principal STAS candidates include an unmanned heavy-lift launch vehicle (HLLV) capable of taking between 150,000 and 300,000 pounds of cargo into orbit and the NASP, which would have the potential for routine spacelaunch from horizontal takeoff. The manned and unmanned systems should be built of “separate components” to preclude the risk of simultaneous stand-downs, Secretary Aldridge stressed.
Current launch vehicle stand-downs notwithstanding, “the US space program is still healthy. We have more than 125 satellites working in orbit. Our space program is still unsurpassed by any other nation, and I believe we will get over the current small setback.” The military space function, he asserted, “is growing. The reason is that we have finally begun to realize the potential that space can offer the military commander in the air and on the ground.”
The SICBM Riddle
One of the key issues facing the new civilian head of the Air Force is the debate in Congress and within the Administration about the ICBM force mix, especially the requirement for 100 Peacekeepers (MX) and the nature of the proposed new Small ICBM. The Air Force’s position, he emphasized, is to support the President’s program, which for the time being, at least, “envisions the SICBM as a single-warhead system.” He added, however, that, in his view, the SICBM should be larger than the congressionally-mandated 30,000-pound ceiling, “because the system will have to live for twenty years or more.”
Because of imponderable factors—such as changes brought on by the threat or by arms control—”we need the flexibility to adapt.” This need for flexibility, he said, might include “rationales for MIRVing the SICBM, so long as the missile’s [mobility and hence its] survivability” are not unduly impaired. If Congress were to deny deployment of the second fifty Peacekeepers permanently—thereby creating the need for the SICBM to make up the resultant deficit of 500 warheads, for instance—”then we might need a MIRVed small missile.” The Air Force, therefore, the new Secretary said, “will look realistically at what it takes to make a good-sized missile mobile without [running the risk of] debonding its solid-rocket” motors.
He added that the Air Force will complete its in-depth technical investigation of various design options for the SICBM later this year, in time for the go-ahead decision on the program by the Defense Systems Acquisition Review Council (DSARC) scheduled for December of this year. “We have no argument with MIRVing the SICBM, if that becomes necessary. . . but we need to prove out” before the DSARC all the consequences associated with significant size increases, he said.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0786aldridge/