Don't forget Eisenhower's original wording described it as the military-industrial-congressional complex. The KC-X would be flying if the original contract to EADS had not been scuttled by Congress:
The original contract to EADS was scuttled because of the Government Accountability Office, which found that the selection process had been handled improperly -- specifically, that the Air Force "did not assess the relative merits of the proposals in accordance with the evaluation criteria identified in the solicitation", and that the Air Force "conducted misleading and unequal discussions with Boeing" [0].
I lived in Seattle at the time, and it was widely remarked by Boeing IDS employees that the protest Boeing filed was a remarkably unusual step. They lose out on contracts all the time and just move on to the next thing; it's generally considered bad form for a defense contractor to throw a fit about losing out on a contract. But there were a lot of shenanigans, as detailed in the GAO report, which is why the decision was ultimately reversed.
If you manage to get close enough. Rifles have range, this gun does not. It will definitely kill you at close range but you're going to have to get there and you should hope your opponents are very few in number.
Calling something or someone "disappointing" or "problematic" is how these people evade enumerating arguments while still attempting to establish themselves as intellectually superior to those they are criticizing. They assume to have the correct position and condescend to anyone who demurs.
Sounds like WordFence. Email notifications are configurable. Turning off most of them is advisable. I've had trouble with users with nominally static IP addresses changing with sufficient frequency to be too much of an annoyance to stay with IP whitelist. Limiting the failed login attempts and maxing out the lockout period cuts down on a lot of the bot activity.
ULA's reasoning was pretty straightforward. The main reason they dropped out of the competition is because the bidding was to be decided largely on price,
The reason they had to drop out is because they're a space launch company without any goddamned engines. The chatter about the bid process is just the typical jawing members of the defense cartel engage in when they deign to speak of competitors. Sometimes they're even successful in reopening the bid process. [1]
> (From Article) Congress wants to phase out the use of the RD-180 engine for national security launches by 2019 as a result of Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
I have't been paying close attention, but maybe you know this. Didn't Russia actually ban export of engines for military launches over Crimea before congress?
ULA's vehicles were designed around the RD-180 rocket engine [1][2]. This is an engine built and designed in Russia.
After Russia annexed Crimea, Congress banned the Pentagon from using Russian rocket engines. Russia responded by counter-banning the Pentagon from using its engines [3]. This made things complicated for ULA.
Or if you don't have a reliable supplier of engines. In this case world politics meddled with space rocketry, so supplier's goods became less than completely available.
Only Atlas-V. Delta-IV uses American hydrogen engines (RS-68); however Delta-IV is rather more expensive than Atlas-V. Even though Atlas-IV is rather more expensive than Falcon-9 - which uses simpler, less performant but cheaper technology.
Bit embarrassing isn't it, that a joint venture between two of the US's (and world's) largest aeronautics and defence companies doesn't have their own engines – and has to rely on the Russians?
Well, Russians are world leaders in at least kerosene-based rocket engines for one. And ULA doesn't quite lack just any engines - they have RS-68 hydrogen engines.
They work but there has to be a commitment to seeing things through no matter the extent of the ensuing carnage, something most western countries have lost their stomach for. See: Chechnya.
Singapore is a success only if you appreciate 24/7 unrelenting surveillance not to mention brutal oppression of anything even vaguely against the status quo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X