Fading Solid Fuel Engine Biz Threatens Navy’s Trident Missile
http://breakingdefense.com/2014/06/fading-solid-fuel-engine-biz-threatens-navys-trident-missile/
Fading Solid Fuel Engine Biz Threatens Navys Trident Missile
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on June 16, 2014 at 10:07 AM
CAPITOL HILL: Failure to launch isnt a metaphorical concern when you work on nuclear weapons. Thats why the director of the Navys euphemistically named Strategic Systems Program (SSP) is a worried man. What has Vice Adm. Terry Benedict worried is something neither he, nor the Navy nor the entire Defense Department directly control. Its the viability of what Benedict called an already fragile industry that produces the solid-fuel rocket boosters for the Navys Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The worst part is that the solid fuel rocket engine business is an industry that will live or die not on the militarys own decisions, but on NASAs.
NASA is the large procurer in this whole equation, so what NASA does affects everyone, from the Navy to the custodian of the nations spy satellites, the National Reconnaissance Organization, Benedict told me after the Peter Huessy Congressional Breakfast here. The retirement of the Space Shuttle already hit US rocket-motor manufacturers hard and raised prices for the industrys remaining customers, including the Trident program. Yes, in theory you could import rocket boosters from abroad, but in practice the big seller is Russia, which is a problematic partner on rocket programs (and other things) right now. I dont think wed ever procure Trident motors outside the United States, Benedict said bluntly when I raised the prospect.
Next, in 2016, NASA will decide whether its new boosters will use liquid fuel, solid propellant, or a mix. If they go all or mostly liquid, thats a potential death blow for domestic solid fuel manufacturing, and the Tridents a solid-fuel missile. Even if the Navy could afford to design a replacement, it would still have to use solid propellant, because liquid rocket fuel is simply unsafe in the tight confines of a submarine.
Thats a unique Navy dilemma. In the Air Force ICBM program, for instance, they do use liquids today in their upper stage, Benedict told me. Liquid (fuels) are a prohibited item on submarines.