Tory Bruno is out at ULA

I guess it figures that after several days with nothing that struck me as interesting and newsworthy, we have three such stories today. One involving United Launch Alliance (ULA), one involving Japan's H3, and the third involving a first ever attempt at an orbital launch from Brazil, from Korea's Innospace. 

As ULA's story is the only one that concerns a US company, I'll go with this one: Tory Bruno resigned as CEO of ULA today, Dec. 22, 2025.

The news of Bruno’s sudden resignation was unexpected. His tenure was marked by a decline in ULA’s market share as rival SpaceX competed for and won ever-larger US government launch contracts. More recently, Bruno oversaw the successful debut of ULA’s Vulcan rocket, followed by struggles to ramp up the new rocket’s launch cadence.

Bruno had a 30-year career as an engineer and general manager for Lockheed Martin’s ballistic missile programs before taking over as president and CEO of United Launch Alliance in August 2014. He arrived as SpaceX started making inroads with its partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket, and ULA’s leading position in the US launch market looked to be in doubt.

It's not like ULA has been a tremendous failure; when Bruno took over, the signs of trouble coming were everywhere. The big one was probably SpaceX got so far ahead so fast on reusability that no one seemed prepared for it. ULA decided to make Vulcan fully expendable, and when SpaceX started getting away from everyone, they changed that to just recovering the engines out of Vulcan for reuse, "one of these days." In fewer words, they weren't a tremendous failure but they weren't challenging to be #1 either.

The next big challenge came out better. They also needed to replace the Atlas V due to its use of Russian engines with the Vulcan, so they needed US-made engines. Bruno chose Blue Origin which was also a "new generation" company that had never made engines for other users, hadn't flown them on their own rocket (New Glenn) and wouldn't fly them on New Glenn until long after Vulcan's first flight. Still, the selection of the Blue Origin engines for Vulcan was a good choice and the engines have done well. 

Still, Bruno had set the goal that Vulcan would fly up to 10 missions in 2025, and they made one launch. 

The retirement of the Atlas V and Delta IV led to a period of downsizing for United Launch Alliance, with layoffs and facility closures in Florida, California, Alabama, Colorado, and Texas. In a further sign of ULA’s troubles, SpaceX won a majority of US military launch contracts for the first time last year.

Bruno, 64, served as a genial public face for ULA amid the company’s difficult times. He routinely engaged with space enthusiasts on social media, fielded questions from reporters, and even started a podcast. Bruno’s friendly and accessible demeanor was unusual among industry leaders, especially those with ties to large legacy defense contractors.

A statement from the co-chairs of ULA’s board, Robert Lightfoot of Lockheed Martin and Kay Sears of Boeing, did not identify a reason for Bruno’s resignation, other than saying he is stepping down “to pursue another opportunity.”

Tory Bruno, the former president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, participates in a news conference at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida, in 2024. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Just for completeness because I always wonder how many people know this: United Launch Alliance is a company created by the two biggest names in "old space" or "space 1.0": Lockheed Martin and Boeing. They're a relatively new company, formed December 1, 2006, as the Space Shuttle program was winding down and the industry was struggling to figure out what was coming next.