Elon Musk, Once a Washington Outsider, Courts Military Business
The entrepreneur’s SpaceX company has amassed billions of dollars in orders, becoming a threat to Boeing and Lockheed Martin
Elon Musk’s SpaceX was dismissed by Pentagon brass during its early years. But now, the billionaire entrepreneur and his company are enjoying more success than ever in snaring Pentagon business.
In recent months Mr. Musk’s team has secured deals for everything from launching some of the nation’s premier national-security satellites to improving weather forecasting for the military to building a new generation of small spacecraft intended to track hostile missiles.
Southern California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the official name of the closely held company, also has worked with the Air Force and the Army to demonstrate communication links. And weeks ago, it signed a Pentagon agreement to study the feasibility of using SpaceX’s proposed deep-space Starship transport, a giant capsule with built-in rocket engines, eventually to whisk cargo around the globe. Company engineers envision moving 80 tons between continents in minutes.
From the beginning, Mr. Musk has said his ultimate goal was colonizing Mars to provide humans a safe escape from Earth if necessary. But in the process, SpaceX amassed an order book of civilian launch contracts estimated to total about $5 billion. It also has won contracts to supply the military with rocket launches and satellite prototypes eventually worth an estimated $6 billion and roughly $9 billion more in past and future National Aeronautics and Space Administration awards, primarily to ferry cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station.
Those totals are still dwarfed by the leading military suppliers. Boeing Co. reported some $26 billion in revenue last year from its defense and space segments, while Lockheed Martin Corp. , the country’s largest defense contractor, reported about $21 billion from its space and missile operations. Both companies also serve as prime contractors for major NASA programs amounting to tens of billions of additional dollars over the years.
Many of SpaceX’s contracts rely on nascent technology, depend on future Pentagon decisions and offer limited initial revenue. But as Congress and the Pentagon increasingly pump money into an array of space programs—with classified projects growing the fastest—industry officials said in the next decade or so, SpaceX will be positioned for a multibillion-dollar boost.
Total defense appropriations could decline if Democrats take the White House and push new spending priorities. But the emphasis on enhanced space capabilities would likely remain in a new administration because it is part of long-term military funding plans and strategies already backed by Congress.
Space X’s pivot toward national-security programs is intended to piggyback on rockets and satellites the company already is building for U.S. civilian and commercial customers. NASA remains its top customer. But the company’s evolving strategy, according to analysts and industry officials, is to adapt some of its current systems to new missions such as tracking space debris, helping defend against superfast missiles and providing secure communication links for U.S. warfighters world-wide.
SpaceX’s leaders “were persistent, did their homework and did everything they needed to do” to gain the military’s trust, according to veteran industry consultant Roger Rusch. “That persistence has paid off.” Mr. Rusch isn’t working for SpaceX or its competitors.
A SpaceX spokesman didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Marketing to generals, though, is very different from negotiating commercial contracts, in which SpaceX often has significant leverage because it charges so much less than rivals. Consultant Keith Volkert, who represents major satellite operators contracting with SpaceX, said Mr. Musk’s team relishes telling his corporate clients they are, quite literally, just along for the ride.
“We’re not actually selling you a rocket,” he recalls company representatives often saying. “We’re selling you a bus, and you don’t get to kick the tires.”
In less than two dozen years, SpaceX has expanded from a handful of employees working in a converted warehouse near a strip mall to roughly 8,000 employees and facilities from Texas to Florida to Washington state. Inside the nation’s capital, it has garnered a reputation as one of the most combative and successful lobbying outfits.
By offering lower prices than traditional industry leaders, SpaceX became the country’s top commercial and civilian launch provider. But that approach won’t work with demanding military customers who give priority to reliability and strict oversight rather than cost, Mr. Volkert said.
Mr. Musk has lured private investors with plans to deploy thousands of small satellites as part of his Starlink venture, a commercial broadband project that industry and military officials say could eventually serve as a backbone for various global military applications including surveillance. Since getting humans to Mars requires developing and testing novel technology likely to cost at least $30 billion by Mr. Musk’s public estimates, industry officials said SpaceX increasingly is looking to Pentagon revenue to help satisfy those escalating cash needs.
The Pentagon already has accepted SpaceX’s Falcon 9 as a mainstay for launching an array of Air Force navigation and intelligence satellites—including the previously controversial feature of landing the rocket’s lower stage and reusing it on subsequent launches.
In August, SpaceX beat out Blue Origin Federation LLC, the space company founded by Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, to lock in some 40% of Pentagon launches over the next few years. United Launch Alliance, a rocket joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, won the remaining missions. But ULA officials have expressed growing concern about SpaceX’s inroads to what just a few years ago had been the partnership’s virtual monopoly launching high-value military payloads.
“They are more than an emerging threat right now,” Ken Possenriede, Lockheed Martin’s chief financial officer, said in October.
As part of the effort to bolster its Pentagon ties, according to industry officials, SpaceX recently hired retired four-star Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, the former head of Northern Command, which is responsible for protecting the U.S. against ballistic-missile attacks. It isn’t clear whether he is a consultant or an employee. SpaceX, which hasn’t announced the move, also has recruited other ex-military officers.
Gen. O’Shaughnessy couldn’t be reached for comment. He declined to comment through his command’s press office before leaving his post in August.
SpaceX’s offerings mirror the Pentagon’s growing emphasis on swarms of small, relatively inexpensive satellites rather than a few expensive behemoths—sometimes derisively called “Battlestar Galacticas”—that are much harder to maneuver or defend.
Buoyed partly by its overall record so far of 100 successful launches and expanding defense prospects, some Wall Street analysts peg SpaceX’s valuation close to the approximately $103 billion market capitalization of Lockheed Martin. Some consultants and analysts, however, worry that greater military emphasis could prove a distraction from the company’s civilian and commercial pursuits.
Becoming a top-tier Pentagon supplier would represent a dramatic about-face for a company that started out shunning Pentagon dollars, years ago filed a high-profile lawsuit alleging the Air Force fenced it off from some business and until earlier this year was still feuding over being shut out of Pentagon funding for rocket development.
Part of Mr. Musk’s image is that of a visionary bent on protecting the environment and discovering an alternate home in the solar system. “If the military is paying the bills,” consultant Tim Farrar said, many outsiders “won’t look at him in quite the same rosy terms.” Mr. Farrar works for a rival broadband provider.
