CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – United Launch Alliance plans to shave as much as a quarter of its workforce over the next two years as the company adapts to new competition from SpaceX.
News 6 partner Florida Today reports that the launcher of Atlas and Delta rockets this week said it will cut as many as 775 to 875 jobs through next year, mostly through "voluntary separations."
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It’s unclear how many of those positions will be located in Cape Canaveral, which currently accounts for about 600 of the company’s 3,400 employees across the country.
“As ULA continues our transformation, we have determined that a reduction in force is necessary,” ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye said in an e-mail. “ULA's intention is to accomplish most, if not all of the reductions via voluntary separation.”
ULA has offered severance packages to eligible employees based on their pay grades and specialties. Layoffs could be necessary if fewer people than expected accept the offers.
Up to 375 jobs will be cut this year, including more than 200 at the company’s Denver headquarters, Rye said. ULA also employs teams in Alabama, Texas and its launch sites in Florida and California.
Another 400 to 500 positions are expected to be eliminated next year.
The cuts, discussed by CEO Tory Bruno last week at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, follow a 30 percent downsizing of ULA’s executive ranks.
Formed in late 2006 as a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, ULA has been the sole launcher of U.S. national security missions and other high-value government payloads like NASA’s planetary probes.
As SpaceX has established itself in recent years with launches of International Space Station cargo and commercial satellites, the Air Force last year opened a national security launch contract to competition for the first time in roughly a decade. ULA declined to bid.
As part of its cost-cutting plan, the company already announced it will phase out its Delta IV rocket over the next few years, because it is prohibitively expensive.
Meanwhile, the company’s workhorse Atlas V is under pressure because its dependence on a Russian main engine has fallen out of favor with Congress.
ULA has begun developing the Vulcan rocket, which could fly for the first time in 2019, to consolidate its fleet into one rocket powered by new American engines.