ULA’s new management predicts it will achieve 18-22 launches in 2026
Before Tory Bruno resigned as CEO of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) to go work for Blue Origin, he had predicted in August last year that ULA was primed to complete two launches per month for the rest of ’25 and throughout ’26.
That prediction did not happen, as the company was only able to do four launches in the last five months of 2025, and no launches so far in 2026.
Yesterday the new management of ULA insisted that Bruno’s prediction was still reasonable, and that the company will complete between 18 to 22 launches before the end of this year.
Speaking during a virtual media roundtable on Feb. 10, Gary Wentz, ULA’s vice president of Atlas and Vulcan Programs, said the company aims to launch two to four Atlas 5 missions and 16 to 18 Vulcan missions. He said the Vulcan rockets will be split between pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and pad 3 at Vandenberg Space Force Base. “It’s a balance. We’re working with our customers to determine specific priorities and order of missions and in the case of Space Force and NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), to determine which missions they wan to get off with higher priority,” Wentz said. “And as we finalize that over the next about six to eight months out of the mission, then we’ll assign whether or not its going to be an Atlas mission or a Vulcan mission.”
John Elbon, the interim CEO following the departure of Tory Bruno in December, said that the company has a “strong commitment” from their commercial and government customers, citing a backlog of more than 80 missions.
That backlog is mostly split between ULA’s big contract to launch Amazon’s Leo satellites and a variety of different agencies in the Pentagon. Both are desperate to get their satellites into space, and it appears ULA is struggling to figure out how to do it. In its early years (from 2007 to 2016) the company was generally able to average about one launch a month, but since then that launch rate as been less than half that. To not only return to those launch rates from a decade ago but to almost double them will be challenging, to say the least.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Before Tory Bruno resigned as CEO of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) to go work for Blue Origin, he had predicted in August last year that ULA was primed to complete two launches per month for the rest of ’25 and throughout ’26.
That prediction did not happen, as the company was only able to do four launches in the last five months of 2025, and no launches so far in 2026.
Yesterday the new management of ULA insisted that Bruno’s prediction was still reasonable, and that the company will complete between 18 to 22 launches before the end of this year.
Speaking during a virtual media roundtable on Feb. 10, Gary Wentz, ULA’s vice president of Atlas and Vulcan Programs, said the company aims to launch two to four Atlas 5 missions and 16 to 18 Vulcan missions. He said the Vulcan rockets will be split between pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and pad 3 at Vandenberg Space Force Base. “It’s a balance. We’re working with our customers to determine specific priorities and order of missions and in the case of Space Force and NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), to determine which missions they wan to get off with higher priority,” Wentz said. “And as we finalize that over the next about six to eight months out of the mission, then we’ll assign whether or not its going to be an Atlas mission or a Vulcan mission.”
John Elbon, the interim CEO following the departure of Tory Bruno in December, said that the company has a “strong commitment” from their commercial and government customers, citing a backlog of more than 80 missions.
That backlog is mostly split between ULA’s big contract to launch Amazon’s Leo satellites and a variety of different agencies in the Pentagon. Both are desperate to get their satellites into space, and it appears ULA is struggling to figure out how to do it. In its early years (from 2007 to 2016) the company was generally able to average about one launch a month, but since then that launch rate as been less than half that. To not only return to those launch rates from a decade ago but to almost double them will be challenging, to say the least.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Best wishes to ULA. But I would be impressed if it can break into double-digits at all this year, never mind 18 – 22. And I would hardly be shocked if it fails to make even the former milestone. I’m afraid we all have to consider ourselves honorary Missourians where ULA is concerned.
I will believe it when I see it!
I’m dubious, but if they can pull it off, great.
I’m an optimist. My prediction is 9 Vulcans and 3 Atlases this year, for a total of 12. That might not make its customers entirely happy, but that would still be a respectable year for ULA, given the context they’re in now.
Richard M: I agree. I think that for this year the company will do well to get back up to a pace of one launch per month. If it begins to meet that schedule it might be able to up it by the latter half of this year, and then really accelerate it in ’27.
Well, they’re on the board now: successful launch of USSF-87 a little earlier this morning. I wasn’t willing to wake up early to watch it, but it looks like….
…they had *another* issue with an SRB nozzle.
Clip: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxuzL_967z5UsQYcwqHkCKxjqZs8Z26t3j?si=ogJHFL2C2Al3wnXz
So you can see it — everyone can see it — but still no official acknowledgement from ULA or the Space Force that it happened.
NSF notes the anomaly in their launch story but they have nothing more to add to it:
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/02/ussf-87-launch/
The upper stage and payload appear to be still on trajectory …. But you wonder how long of a delay the inevitable investigation of this “observation” will impose on Vulcan launches. Not the kind of thing ULA needed at this point.
Ok, ULA has issued a statement about this problem on X:
“We had an observation early during flight on one of the four solid rocket motors, the team is currently reviewing the data. The booster, upper stage, and spacecraft continued to perform on a nominal trajectory.”
https://x.com/i/status/2021893224907083949
More awkward conversations between ULA and Northrop Grumman are sure to ensure!
P.S. Anyway, I would, uh, like to withdraw my prediction. :(
The scaffolding is away from SLS, and SH survived rigorous tests.
What’s the deal with the solids? The simplest rocket tech there is.
Did competent employees bolt when it became NorGrum?
1. I am sure that Bob will have a thorough blog post dedicated to this launch and its anomaly, but in the mean time some additional bits of info and thoughts. SpaceFlightNow’s story confirms that what appeared to many observers as an excessive roll after the SRB fireworks really did happen:
Fortunately, as with last time, the Vulcan booster was able to compensate and get it back on a satisfactory trajectory, it seems. (Tip of the hat to ULA engineers and software guys). On the other hand, the article reminds us of a moment in the pre-launch press conference that looks very awkward now:
https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/02/12/vulcan-suffers-solid-rocket-booster-problem-during-ussf-87-launch/
I guess it’s not as far behind you as you thought, John!
2. Someone on the NSF forums pointed out that the Vulcan now has a ~17% nozzle failure rate so far for the 63XL Eeeek. And with a 17% failure rate, a Vulcan VC6 would have a >65% chance of having at least one nozzle failure… Yes, the Space Force is going to want a good, long, hard look at just what is going on at Northrop’s factory floor.
3. And that raises further questions about how thorough the last investigation was, and how thorough the fixes that Northrop made to its process were. Last March, Tory Bruno insisted that the last nozzle anomaly was just a manufacturing defect, and that to ULA, it “was pretty clear that that was an outlier, far out of family.” ( https://spacenews.com/manufacturing-defect-blamed-for-vulcan-solid-rocket-motor-anomaly/ ) We do not know whether this event was the same failure mode (though it sure looks like it was), but I think the 63XL family has more black sheep than ULA assumed last year!
4. Jeff asks: “Did competent employees bolt when it became NorGrum?” It’s a good question.
5. No way to know how long this is going to take Vulcamn offline, but it’s surely gotta be a few months at least. The Pentagon will insist on a thorough investigation and thorough corrective measures. ULA’s 2026 is not going to achieve its cadence objectives.
Final post (I will save all the rest for Bob’s launch post, if I have any more): Spaceflight Now has a thread on X now with photos and closeup videos of the SRB “observation,” and the subsequent roll by the rocket, which are worth looking at:
https://x.com/SpaceflightNow/status/2021906130411434223
Someone on X meanwhile asks Eric Berger just how this rocket got certified. Eric replies: “This is probably a question that some military officers are going to be asking this morning.”
https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/2021935295638425964
Richard M,
Seems to me that Berger’s notional military officers would also have some questions to put to NorGrum about the LGM-35 Sentinel ICBM program. If NorGrum has actually lost the plot on building solid-fuel motors of this general size class, maybe we ought to rethink entrusting them with production of 1/3 of the US strategic triad that’s supposed to be in service for a half-century starting in 2029. Might be advisable to solicit a quote for the Sentinel job from Palmer Luckey.