Why can't the US escape its dependence on Russian rocket engines?

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing high-level sources and sources in the US industry, asserted that the US will not be able to stop importing Russian RD-180 rocket engines until at least 2025, or even longer.

RD-33MK engine. Illustration: Sputnik

"Although both houses of the US Congress have made demands to quickly stop using Russian RD-180 rocket engines for national security reasons, the reality is much more complicated than the thinking of the congressmen - who want to replace Russian RD-180 rocket engines with American-made engines" - the WSJ article asserted.

The WSJ also said that the Pentagon’s main supplier of rocket technology is United Launch Alliance (ULA). This company will continue to launch Atlas V rockets using Russian-made rocket engines until 2025. The import of Russian rocket engines may even last until 2028.

Since the summer of 2016, the Pentagon has had to admit that the US does not have the capacity to replace the RD-180 rocket engines with similar but more expensive American engines. The US budget is not large enough to spend billions of dollars on research and self-production of replacement engines for the Russian RD-180.

The Pentagon was forced to release this information because the House Armed Services Committee in mid-May 2016 passed a draft resolution on budget allocations for the Pentagon in fiscal year 2017. Accordingly, the budget planned for purchasing Russian RD-180 engines was cut in half, meaning the US only planned to purchase 9, instead of 18 of this type of engine. Previously, there was a proposal that the US must purchase 18 more RD-180 engines to ensure the successful launch of Atlas V rockets into space.

It is known that the agreement between Moscow and Washington on the supply of 101 RD-180 engines by the Russian enterprise "Energomash" to the US with a value of about 1 billion USD was signed in 1997.

However, due to the tension between Russia and the US, US lawmakers proposed banning the use of the Russian RD-180 engine. However, shortly after, the US corporation ULA ordered 20 more Russian RD-180 engines. ULA is one of several US companies working on new rocket engines. US Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology Frank Kendall had previously stated that US-made engines could only be manufactured after 2021.

According to Sputnik/Infonet