United Launch Alliance confirmed Thursday that a senior executive resigned this week, a day after making “inaccurate” comments to an audience at the University of Colorado.

Brett Tobey, who was ULA’s vice president of engineering, spoke to an audience Tuesday at CU-Boulder.

In a statement shared with The Denver Post, Tory Bruno, CEO of Centennial-based ULA, said, “The views, positions and inaccurate statements Mr. Tobey presented at his recent speaking engagement were not aligned with the direction of the company, my views, nor the views I expect from ULA leaders. Mr. Tobey resigned his position at ULA effective immediately. We welcome competition and have been transforming the company to address the future of the space launch industry with our innovative new rocket and technology, while at the same time significantly reducing the cost of launch.”

It’s unclear what Tobey said specifically that led to his resignation.

According to a Reuters report, he said ULA had dropped out of bidding on a U.S. military contract for a next-generation GPS satellite to avoid a “cost shootout” with rival SpaceX.

ULA dropped out of the space-launch competition in November.

The company had said it wouldn’t compete for some launch contracts unless the U.S. Department of Defense granted ULA a waiver to circumvent Congress and buy more Russian-made RD-180 engines. The Pentagon declined.

ULA and the Pentagon have faced political pressure over ULA’s reliance on the Russian-made rocket engines.

At the time, Bruno said he was “disappointed that we’re not able to participate.”

That left SpaceX, the company owned by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, as the only bidder.

Another report by SpaceNews said Tobey implied ULA would use the BE-4 engine made by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin over Aerojet Rocketdyne’s AR1 to power its new Vulcan reusable rocket.

Earlier this month, ULA entered into agreements with Blue Origin, Aerojet Rocketdyne and the Air Force to manufacture engines for ULA-launched U.S. military satellites.

Bruno has told SpaceNews that ULA is considering both companies’ engines for the Vulcan, the report said.

SpaceNews has an audio recording of Tobey’s Boulder presentation at dpo.st/bretttobey.

Tobey joined ULA in September to focus on business transformation, according to his ULA biography, which has been pulled from the ULA website. He previously spent 32 years at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company.

Tamara Chuang: tchuang@denverpost.com or visit dpo.st/tamara