United Launch Alliance is on the cusp of a significant milestone for its Vulcan rocket. The 202-foot-tall (61 m) launch vehicle is poised to take flight on its first national security mission as soon as Tuesday, August 12.
Atop the two-stage rocket are a pair of missions for that are part of the U.S. Space Force’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. The launch will be the first post-certification flight for a Vulcan rocket.
“This is a pretty important event for the company and for the capability, but also for all of us personally. This is the inaugural launch of Vulcan into national security space. It is what we designed this rocket to do,” said ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno during an audio roundtable with reports on Aug. 7.
“This particular mission is interesting to us because while, if you were picking, you might choose to start with a more plain vanilla mission, this is, in fact, the anchor case that drove the design and the architecture of the whole rocket,” Bruno added. “This is the tough mission, directly injected to GSO, geosynchronous orbit. It makes it one of our longest duration missions ever.”
ULA hoped to launch this mission, dubbed United States Space Force (USSF)-106, much earlier than now, but it faced setbacks, partly due to a solid rocket motor (SRM) anomaly during the second of two certification flights in 2024, partly due to that second certification mission being delayed by lack of readiness for Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane and also due to delays with the USSF-106 payloads.
The military satellites encapsulated inside Vulcan’s payload fairing were delivered to the Government Vertical Integration Facility (VIF-G) at Space Launch Complex 41 near the end of July to complete the rocket stack. In the coming days, it will be rolled out to the launch pad for final, prelaunch preparations.
USSF-106 is the first of nine planned missions that Bruno said ULA aims to achieve before the end of the year. These will be a mix of commercial and government customers with some of the former flying on Atlas 5 rockets.
“We have a stockpile of both Atlases and Vulcans fully built, ready to fly. So that is another thing that sort of kicks up that confidence higher than it would’ve been, say, if you’d asked me a question like that last year,” Bruno said in response to a reporter question about his confidence in flying nine more times in 2025. “There are 13 Atlases to go. All but the last two are fully finished and literally in storage, some at the Cape, some still back at Decatur, and those last two will be finished shortly.”
The remaining Atlas 5 rockets are allocated as follows (not in order of planned launch):
- 7 – Amazon’s Project Kuiper (up to 27 satellites per rocket)
- 6 – Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft (for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program)
- 1 – Viasat’s ViaSat-3 F2 satellite (expected to arrive in Florida by end of September 2025)
ULA’s goal is to achieve a cadence of two launches per month by the end of the year and then extend that out to 2026 and beyond.
“We’ve got almost half a dozen Vulcans fabricated in storage, waiting to go as well and lots and lots of SRMs, up into the 40s,” Bruno said. “So that helps us with that.”
Enter NSSL missions
The forthcoming launch of USSF-106 is the first of a slate of 26 missions awarded to ULA as part of the NSSL Phase 2 contract worth $4.5 billion. Once upon a time, USSF-51 would’ve been the first NSSL launch on a Vulcan rocket, but that mission was moved to an Atlas 5 that flew from SLC-41 on July 30, 2024.
Bruno previously said that its 2025 manifest, following a pair of Atlas 5 launches for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband internet constellation, would see the flights of USSF-106 and then USSF-87. On Thursday though, he suggested that there may be some other flights in-between.
“[USSF-87] is the very next Space Force mission and, depending on when it happens, there may or may not be Atlases in between, flying for commercial customers,” Bruno said. Those would either be Amazon or Viasat, since NASA leaders previously said the next launch of Starliner won’t come until at least early 2026.
Major General Purdy, thanks for dropping by the Cape last week! Means a lot to our folks. We are very excited to bring Vulcan into service. pic.twitter.com/BMzapGsxjc
— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) July 30, 2025
Bruno and ULA have long-since marketed the Vulcan rocket as a prime candidate for the Department of Defense and other government customers, given its ability to fly to “exotic orbits that are primarily for the government.” He pointed to the “very, very long-duration mission” of USSF-106 as a prime example.
“You can’t do that mission in less than about seven hours, including the disposal activities, and they often run longer than that,” Bruno said. “I can’t say the duration of this one yet because the customer, I don’t believe, has released that, but it’s not uncommon for a mission like that. Seven, eight hours and you want to take a lot of mass to that very difficult orbit that requires burns at the end of that duration.”
Bruno argued that a Vulcan rocket, with its single core booster, was designed to deliver its Centaur upper stage further into space with its propellant still at full capacity to allow for missions with those long coasts and multiple burns. He said at that point, it’s prudent to have as light of a vehicle as possible, which Bruno argues made the case for using a combination of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.
“When you design a rocket, you’re going to pick the orbit you want to be most efficient for and it will drive your architecture. This literally is that mission,” Bruno said. “Our very first mission will be that bounding case.”
Future growth – promises and perils
The next few years will be mostly driven by launches of ULA’s Vulcan rocket. Amazon will fairly quickly move through its available Atlas 5 rocket launches to get its Kuiper constellation on orbit as soon as possible and Viasat will be launching its satellite to a geostationary Earth orbit soon too.
That leaves just Boeing and Starliner, which will be driven by a combination of NASA’s confidence to fly it again with crew on board and the manifest of the International Space Station in its final five years of life.
Bruno said ULA is about 76 percent through building out Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to accommodate Vulcan rocket launches. He said getting that finished has been “a little bit of a battle.”
For the VSFB SLC3 fans: 76% complete! Expect to be able to certify b4 year end. Been a journey… Industry wide shortage of Trades people, critical parts, and equipment. Battled through all of that and over the hump. Whew! pic.twitter.com/QEixktwdd6
— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) July 30, 2025
“It has experienced shortages in trades people, so structural welders, pipe fitters who do cryogenic plumbing, so not the average plumber, if you will. Even the electricians. We use very, very high power, so it’s not like an electrician you would use in your home or even a typical in industrial application,” Bruno said,.
“It’s been a challenge that we’ve gotten over the hump and we’re now coming in on closing it.”
Bruno said SLC-3 will be certified before the end of the year and then it will be up to their government customers to determine when the first launch from that California pad will take place.
Meanwhile, over at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, work is nearly finished on their second VIF, dubbed VIF-A, which will focus on integration of Vulcan rockets for commercial customers, like Amazon.
“We’ll probably see those first flights for Amazon on Vulcan and we’ll hope to accomplish that and be flying for them this year,” Bruno said. “The specific dates of those, they’ll announce when they’re ready to announce them.”
ULA aren’t the only kids on the block who are growing and expanding operations at the Cape. This week, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for SpaceX’s proposal to launch up to 44 times from Launch Complex 39A using its Starship-Super Heavy rocket (collectively known as Starship.
SpaceX is hoping to get the green light to conduct up to 88 landings of the first and second stages of that rocket, in addition to the static fire tests of both that would be needed ahead of integration and flight.
Every time Starship lights its engines, it will require a massive clearance across the Florida spaceport, which as presented, would include LC-39B and SLC-41. Separately, the Department of the Air Force is considering SpaceX’s proposal to conduct up to 76 launches and 152 landings at SLC-37, which would feature two launch towers, if approved.
“Starship is an interesting vehicle, in that it’s not just another rocket on the range. It is of an unprecedented size and the request that has been put in for the license is at a very, very high launch rate,” Bruno said. “We’re counting on the Space Force and the FAA to do a very thorough analysis of that and how it will affect not just the ecological environment, but also the launch environment.”
The public comment period for the proposal at SLC-37 closed on July 28, 2025, and the Air Force is sifting through those as part of its final analysis. It will issue its final EIS on that pad sometime in the Fall along with a record of decision.
Meanwhile, the FAA will continue collecting public thoughts on the LC-39A proposal through a 45-day comment period and a series of public meetings in late August and early September. Those would be folded into a final EIS issued at a later time.
“There are certain operations you can’t do on your pad when another vehicle is fueled, due to the energetics that are associated with that and that’s part of what the range has to do in directing traffic with the multiple users that are there now,” Bruno said. “This new user will be, as I said, unprecedented. It’s much larger than a Saturn 5. It is something that’s not been on the range before, so they need to do a very thorough and careful analysis of that.
“We’re counting on them to do it so that we can all use the range, that the capacity of our nation is greater and not smaller.”
