USU unit trimming 25 defense-contract jobs

When Congress pulled the plug on a joint U.S.-Russian missile defense project, it not only ended a program that promised to help ease the countries past the saber-rattling of the Cold War, it also ended the jobs of about 25 employees of the Utah State University Research Foundation.

Layoffs will strike across the foundation, which has four units. But one of the units, the Space Dynamics Laboratory, will have most of the layoffs.

Cancellation of the Russian-American Observation Satellite cuts the laboratory's budget by about one-third. Last year, the RAMOS program brought in $26 million.

Besides the approximately 25 who will be laid off over the next two weeks, others are expected to retire, including leaving through early retirement.

The lab is by far the largest unit of the USU Research Foundation, said spokeswoman Trina Paskett. Because it lives or dies by outside projects like RAMOS, the foundation is financially separate from USU and its employees are not USU employees.

RAMOS was intended to use satellites to detect the launch of an enemy missile attack. Growing out of former President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, it began in 1992 with a one-satellite program and changed in 2000 to a project that would deploy two satellites.

According to a description posted by the Missile Defense Agency, "Both of the satellites were to be built by the Russians and fitted with U.S. sensors. In addition to providing valuable technical data, this project aimed to help the U.S. and Russia move beyond the confrontational spirit of the Cold War."

The Space Dynamics Lab was the prime contractor for the sensors. Russian specialists were frequent visitors to the lab so they could coordinate their part of the project, Paskett said.

According to lab director Michael Pavich, earlier this year the Missile Defense Agency — which runs RAMOS — informed the lab that they would not fund the project in 2005. Space Dynamics officials expected it to be brought to a close by April 2005 and drew up plans to end the project.

But in the recent Defense Appropriations Bill, he said, Congress "rescinded the 2004 money. ... They took about $13 million out of the program that had already been obligated in 2004."

That left $900,000 to wrap up the effort.

"When Congress rescinded the money, the Missile Defense Agency had to find the money to give back to Congress, so to speak," Pavich, a retired Air Force general, told the Deseret Morning News. "And so they terminated the program immediately."