Posted: Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 6:45 PM ET (2245 GMT)
The CEO of SpaceX announced Friday that the company had filed suit against the Air Force to protest a "block buy" contract it recently awarded to United Launch Alliance (ULA). SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said at a Washington press conference that the company filed suit in the Court of Federal Claims regarding a contract for 36 launch vehicle cores the Air Force recently awarded to ULA, which manufactures the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets. SpaceX, which is currently in the process of having its Falcon 9 certified by the Air Force for military launches, argues that the contract should not have been awarded until the certification process had been completed, so that it could compete for some of those launches. The Air Force had previously planned to set aside 14 launches, separate from the 36 cores in the block buy contract, for competition, but budget issues caused the number of available launches to decline by about half. Neither ULA nor the Air Force provided an immediate comment on the suit.

Related Links:

•  Space News article
•  NBCNews.com article
•  Aviation Week article
•  Bloomberg News article
•  Reuters article