ULA Leadership Move Could Be Precursor to Further Changes

 The announcement put as positive a spin as possible on Gass' departure, but reading between the lines makes it clear leaders at the parent companies felt a change was needed, said Teal Group analyst Marco Caceres.

"Gass hung his hat on ULA's track record of successful launches," Caceres said. But ULA looked complacent when matched against the dynamic Elon Musk, whose SpaceX will shortly begin competing with ULA for military space launches.

Caceres said he expects to see layoffs and a streamlining of ULA to find all possible cost savings.

"My sense is you're going to see at ULA a restructuring of some sort, because ultimately they're going to have to find a way to be a lot more competitive on price," he said.