U.S. military space organizations continued their "cultural change" move to make space a routine part of military operations across all service lines. One focus concerns plans for shifting the advanced technology base toward space in order to build a new technology foundation for more integrated air and space operations in the 21st century as space is becoming increasingly dominant in military reconnaissance, communications, warning, navigation, missile defense and weather-related areas.

Plans approved in 1997 for development of two new families of Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELVs) as successors to the Titan 4 in 1999 have resulted in two companies competing in the EELV program with their designs of boosters aimed at achieving a balance between cost, performance and system reliability as required for future government and commercial launch services: Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 with the Russian RD-180 engine in the first stage and a Centaur-derived second stage, and Boeing's Delta 4 with a new cryogenic first stage engine (the Rocketdyne RS-68) and the Delta 3's upper stage with stretched tanks. Expected development costs for each of the two EELVs were approximately $1.5 billion.

Military launch attempts from Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg in 1999 totaled seven payloads, with two failures. Of particular importance was the launch of the 6000-lbs. (2720 kg) Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite (Argos), the USAF's largest and most capable research and development satellite to date, on a Delta 2 on 2/23. Argos carries nine payload experiments, for 30 research objectives. Mission losses were incurred by an early warning satellite and a Milstar-2 communications satellite when their launch vehicles malfunctioned, the first, a Titan 4B/IUS, on 4/9, the second, Titan 4B/Centaur, on 4/30.

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