The Air Force asked a federal judge June 28 to dismiss a lawsuit against it by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), claiming the company missed its opportunity to bid for the “block buy” of 36 launch cores to United Launch Alliance (ULA) and, thus, lacks standing to sue.
The service, in a June 30 filling in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, said SpaceX knew about the Air Force’s intent to award a sole-source contract to ULA and received a copy of the request for proposals (RFP) less than a month after it was issued, yet it failed to object or indicate that it, too, could compete for the eventual contract.
“SpaceX’s own failure to timely object to the RFP means that it does not have standing to bring those complaints to this court by challenging what it calls the ‘block buy’ contract,” the Air Force said in its filing.
SpaceX Wednesday declined to comment on the motion. The company sued to force the Air Force to compete the block buy, saying it was complying with a previous agreement with the service before the Air Force awarded the block buy.
A future court date to discuss the motion has not been set. ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA].