Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief engineer, speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition in Washington, DC on March 9, 2020. Getty Images/Win McNamee Elon Musk isn’t afraid to speak his mind, and the SpaceX CEO is especially forthright when it comes to billions of dollars in government contracts for rocket launches. Tory Bruno, the CEO of Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s rocket-building joint venture United Launch Alliance, sparred with the billionaire founder on Twitter on Wednesday. The crux of the argument is Musk’s assertion that ULA receives significant government support, which Bruno vehemently refutes. “ULA would be dead as a doornail if the DoD didn’t require two launch providers,” Musk wrote in a tweet. “In this situation, money is being diverted from SpaceX’s goal of creating life multiplanetary vs. ULA’s goal of maximizing payouts to Lockheed & Boeing,” Musk noted in another tweet. ULA receives a “billion dollar annual subsidy” from the Pentagon, according to Musk, who called the competitor “a complete waste of taxpayer money” last year. Bruno, for one, has termed the concept that ULA receives government subsidies “an insane fallacy,” claiming that “there is no subsidy,” and writing an op-ed about the “misinformation.” The CEOs are referring to a widely known Air Force agreement known as “ELC.” The late Sen. John McCain outlined ELC and its link with ULA – a firm founded in 2006 by uniting Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s rocket divisions in a 50-50 collaboration – in a hearing before the Armed Services subcommittee five years ago. “The purpose of ELC was to ensure that ULA, as the sole [United States] launch provider at the time, could be ready to launch when critical national security payloads were needed,” McCain said in a statement, adding that it was part of a larger contract called “EELV,” which was created “to fund the fixed cost of maintaining ULA launch infrastructure, critical to assuring access to space.” For nearly a decade, ULA dominated the market for large, expensive military satellite launches in the United States. In 2014, SpaceX famously sued the Air Force over a contract that was awarded solely to ULA. The lawsuit was eventually settled, and the military has awarded SpaceX and ULA multiple contracts through competition in recent years. McCain, like Musk, was critical of ULA continuing to receive financing under the ELC after the SpaceX settlement. In a 2016 hearing, McCain remarked, “Stop supporting one military industrial complex for $800 million a year from taxpayers.” “How can you compete when your rivals are paid $800 million a year to stay in business?” The Air Force was required by Congress to conclude the ELC contract by the end of 2020, and ULA’s most recent payment under the deal was $98.5 million for three launches in 2019. On Wednesday, Bruno reacted to Musk, claiming that ULA received government subsidies and focusing instead on the firms’ present rivalry. “For both the industry and the customers, competition is beneficial. As a result of the greater industrial foundation we currently have, our country is better off “Bruno penned an essay. “I congratulate you on your significant achievements. We’re proud of ours as well “Added he. The back-and-forth between the CEOs began with a discussion about SpaceX’s groundbreaking practice of reusing rocket boosters for orbital launches. SpaceX has been able to reuse a single Falcon booster up to ten times and is gradually reusing the nosecones as well, saving the company millions of dollars, according to Musk. Initially, SpaceX planned the booster to require “refurbishment” after 10 launch-and-landings, but Musk said the business has needed to do less between missions, with some Falcon 9 boosters currently scheduled to launch up to 30 times apiece. “The amount of work required between flights is decreasing, as evidenced by the decreasing time between reflights,” Musk stated. ULA, on the other hand, has been working on the Vulcan rocket to replace its outdated Atlas and Delta rockets as well as to phase out the use of Russian-made rocket engines. The Atlas V rocket is powered by Russian-made RD-180 engines purchased by ULA. ULA has talked of reusing Vulcan’s rocket engines by collecting them in the air with a system of parachutes and helicopters, but it hasn’t said when it plans to start testing the technique. The first Vulcan launches will be disposable, with each component of the rocket falling into the water or exploding in the atmosphere. United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan system, as depicted by an artist. United Launch Alliance (ULA) is a non-profit ULA executives have stated that the corporation still intends to reuse Vulcan rockets in the future, but have yet to set a schedule or an objective for doing so. CNBC Pro can help you become a better investor. Get stock recommendations, analyst calls, exclusive interviews, and CNBC TV access. To begin your free trial, simply fill out the form below./nRead More