Generally sympathetic to this point of view, but Lockheed/Boeing actually started this war by publicly calling SpaceX's tech into question. From Dec. 18 2012:
The Lockheed-Boeing venture, United Launch Alliance, has
launched “hundreds of billions of dollars” of satellites
on 66 consecutive missions, said Robert Stevens,
Lockheed’s chairman and chief executive officer.
“I’m hugely pleased with 66 in a row from ULA, and I don’t
know the record of SpaceX yet,” Stevens said at a Dec. 14
Bloomberg Government breakfast in Washington. “Two in a
row?
A public statement like that probably means that both Lockheed and Boeing have been beating up on SpaceX as "risky" behind closed doors for a while. Musk saw an opportunity to turn the tables and took it, first by offering to "help" on Twitter and then via these comments. This is separate from the technical issue at stake, but looks like Musk may not have started this particular fight. Moreover, given that SpaceX and Boeing are going to head-to-head, it is likely that Musk/SpaceX has now made a fairly detailed study of Boeing's batteries to make their case in subsequent competitive launch bids.
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2012-12-18/musk-vs...
A public statement like that probably means that both Lockheed and Boeing have been beating up on SpaceX as "risky" behind closed doors for a while. Musk saw an opportunity to turn the tables and took it, first by offering to "help" on Twitter and then via these comments. This is separate from the technical issue at stake, but looks like Musk may not have started this particular fight. Moreover, given that SpaceX and Boeing are going to head-to-head, it is likely that Musk/SpaceX has now made a fairly detailed study of Boeing's batteries to make their case in subsequent competitive launch bids.