Why the U.S. Needs Russian Rocket Engines to Spy on Russia

[Purveyor]

JUNE 6, 2016 12:23 PM EDT

When President Barack Obama came into office, the fact that Russia sold the U.S. the rocket engines it needed for launches was a feature of U.S. foreign policy, not a bug. Obama was trying to reset the U.S. relationship with Moscow, and that meant finding areas where the two former Cold War rivals could cooperate. If the U.S. would rely on Russia to deal with Iran and supply troops in Afghanistan, why not rely on Russia to get satellites into space?

But that was 2009. In 2016 this dependence is very much a bug. Today, Russian aircraft buzz U.S. vessels on the Baltic Sea and bomb U.S.-supported rebels in Syria. Today, the U.S. sanctions officials close to Russian president Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine.

The Pentagon’s reliance on Russian rocket engines will be at the center of a debate this week in the Senate when lawmakers take up a bill to authorize the 2017 U.S. defense budget. Senator John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is proposing to phase out America’s reliance on the Russian rocket engines.

The contractor that performs the space launches for the U.S. government, United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, says the Russian rockets are cheaper than the American alternatives. Two senators from states where these defense contractors employ many people -- Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, and Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois -- favor an amendment that would let the U.S. buy twice as many Russian engines as McCain favors. That would allow for more launches, and more related work in those two states.

In a telephone interview, McCain was blunt about this amendment. “If they are able to prevent us from moving off these Russian-built rocket engines, it’s corruption,” he said. “It’s not an accident that the senators from Alabama and Illinois are the ones pushing for this amendment.”

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-06/why-the-u-s-needs-russian-rocket-engines-to-spy-on-russia

[braddy]

1. It is insane to have put Russia in charge of our space based defenses.

It is one thing to find something that they can sell us, but not the foundational basics required for a defense arm.

[MisterP]

2. Russia: "let's build rockets for the purpose of launching things"

US: "let's launch things for the purpose of rivalry with Russia"