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US Military Told To Move From 'Expendable' To 'Reusable' Rockets (arstechnica.com)
schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: The conference report from the U.S. House and Senate calls for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program of the Department of Defense, commonly known as the EELV program, to be named the "National Security Space Launch program" as of March 1, 2019. No longer will the military rely solely on expendable rockets. Moreover, the report says the U.S. Air Force must consider both expendable and reusable launch vehicles as part of its solicitation for military launch contracts. And in the event that a contract is solicited for a mission that a reusable launch vehicle is not eligible to compete for, the Air Force should report back to Congress with the reason why. The U.S. House has already agreed to the conference report, and it should be taken up in the Senate next week. After that, it will need the president's signature to become law. [...] It is quite a change from the state of play just 13 years ago, when ULA was dominant and SpaceX was roundly dismissed by the courts and the broader aerospace community.
It's for space launch and not for ballistic missiles which are actually used surface-to-surface (with a bit of space in between).
It is pretty funny though to see the big rusty and spoiled old fat-and-lazy-on-cost-plus-contracts defense contractors that benefitted so well from an earlier such government mandate (the one that created the EELV program) now on the other end of such a mandate. Given that none of the overpaid morons managing these firms took SpaceX seriously, none will be on an even footing with SpaceX for future contracts. If the clowns pretending to be CEOs of these firms do not wise-up and order a major shift to reusability then it's likely Blue Origin will be ready with a reusable wile the big3 old school firms are still debating a course of action. Can it be that we are about to see a colossal abuse of taxpayers finally get punished? It probably depends on how many corrupt members of congress the big old firms can buy and whether its enough to defeat the policy change.
LockMart is currently designing their non-reusable Vulcan launch vehicle as their next-gen replacement for the Russia!Russia!Russia!-engined Atlas launch vehicle.
Boeing seems to be prepping to retire the Delta launch vehicle with no replacement.
NothrupGrumman (who have recently absorbed Orbital ATK) is home to the non-reusable Russian-engined Antares launch vehicle and they are currently designing a newer non-reusable solid-motor-based launch vehicle (the Omega) for the future.