A Case Study in NASA-DoD - The Black Vault

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Air Force Headquarters to NASA a Memorandum of Agreement on the Procurement
of USAF Designated &=all Mti-Mission Modular Spacecraft
Systems Between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and
the Department of Defense (See Appendix J).
This memorandum essentially called for NASA to underwrite the development
of the SMMS having capabilities compatible with the Air Force
requirements but determined jointly by NASA and DoD. The DoD agreed
to purchase a block of the SMMS for the STP missions, paying only the
recurring costs of the SlMS. The Air Force agreed to make payments to
NASA three years in advance for subsequent spacecraft delivery. The
purpose of an advance payment of $1 million was to relieve NASA's immediate
budget problems that prevented NASA from initiating the development
of the SMMS with FY 77 NASA funds. Such a delayed development
would jeopardize the Air Force Space Test Program's initial shuttle
schedule.
NASA's rejoinder to the Air Force-proposed Memorandum of Agreement
stated that (1) a joint NASA/USAF working group reviewing the SMMS concluded
that an agreement can be reached on a set of joint technical
requirements; (2) NASA is in no position to initiate the SlMS program
because NASA mission requirements will not support new-start funding
for either FY 77 or FY 78; and (3) based on the results of the first
phase of the Rand study, NASA would make available the MIS to meet the
Air Forceys March 1979 shuttle launch date, and would consider upgrading
the AEM to meet the Air Force requirement, but that NASA was unable to
fund such a modification. It should be noted that no specific mention
was made about the Air Force-proposed advanced funding of $1 million.
As of September 1976, the Air Force was not intending to follow up
NASA's offer because NASA apparently was not willing to quote a price
for the MMS and because NASA's offer left the Air Force without assurance
that the upgraded AEM would ever be developed by NASA. In the latter
case, the Air Force could be facing a total program cost of about $100
million more than if the upgraded AE4 was developed. Given a procurement
The estimated program cost for the 1MS/upgraded AEM option is $146.
million, as compared to $222 million for the pure STPSS option, $263
million for the MMS option, or $240 million for the AEM/fS option (see
Sec. IV, Table 12).