ULA does not and cannot offer guaranteed launch at any point in time -- their launches, including launches of government payloads, can be and are delayed for da

ULA does not and cannot offer guaranteed launch at any point in time -- their launches, including launches of government payloads, can be and are delayed for days by anything from technical glitches to unfavorable wind conditions to planes wandering into the launch corridor. (Google "Atlas V launch delay" for numerous examples.) And they don't have boosters "on standby, ready to go"; like everyone else, they refer to launch preparations as "campaigns", and they extend for weeks after the rocket and payload are both at the pad. (There are other capabilities ULA offers that SpaceX still can't match, but those are all about babying the payloads -- mounting them vertically on the rocket, rather than tilting as is SpaceX's current practice; providing clean-room access to payloads already on the rocket, and so forth.)