The US State Department, on learning that Ukrainian and Russian rocket technology experts got hold of some unique information in the field, suspended certain work in line with the innovative Sea Launch project.
Under this project Boeing was to launch satellites using rocket carriers taking off from a floating platform, The Washington Post reported Saturday, adding that dozens of Ukrainian and Russian engineers and technicians had to leave Long Beach with the Sea Launch command ship-platform anchored in coastal waters.
There is no definite information about the kind of data transferred by Boeing with its 40% interest in, and the right to supervise, the project. Its spokesman did not deny that there was an information leak and admitted that Boeing had failed to take proper security measures.
As it is, work on this major international project has practically come to a standstill. Apart from the Americans, it involves the Ukrainian Southern Design Bureau, Pivdenmash Production Association with a 15% interest, and the Russian Energiya Co. with 25%.
The Boeing Corporation planned to launch the first US communication satellite early next year, using the Ukrainian Zenith rocket carrier equipped with a Russian Energiya booster. Ground control was to be effected using US and Russian computer systems mounted on a Norwegian platform. Observers believe that the State Department made this decision pressed by a Congress still in turmoil over confidential space technology data reaching China, assisting it in modernizing its US-targeted ICBM systems. This happened in 1996 when a Chinese rocket carrier launching a US satellite blew up before reaching orbit. An official of Loral Space & Communications, Ltd. taking part in the project, sent the Chinese an unauthorized report on the abortive mission, containing data which Chinese experts would find very much to their liking.
Unlike China, Russia and Ukraine operate advanced ICBM systems matching US counterparts in almost every respect. A number of US Congressmen and major business people welcomed Sea Launch, believing it would enable US companies and military engineers to have a better idea about former USSR missile technologies. One US industrialist said that by carrying this joint project “we will learn more from them than they will from us, because they have the secrets, not we.” The Day was told by Oleksandr Lohinov, head of the Pivdenmash laboratory, that Boeing was supposed to protect Ukrainian know-how, and that all such information was “readily available.”
Yuri Alekseyenko, head of the Southern Design Bureau's information center, informed The Day that the US newspaper had a point; Sea Launch Co., registered in the Cayman Islands, failed to make a timely contract authorizing its operation in US territory.






