Richard J. Vacura’s experience in government contracts matters includes counseling, litigation and claims development for major aerospace, shipbuilding, telecommunications, electronics, and information technology companies. His counseling experience includes due diligence reviews for domestic and foreign acquisitions, novation and assignment issues, drafting and negotiating teaming and joint venture agreements, technical data and nondisclosure agreements, export control, small business, international anticorruption, national security, and standard domestic and international solicitations and contract/subcontract terms and conditions. For the past two years, Mr. Vacura has been named a Leading Lawyer in Government Contracts in the Chambers USA: America’s Leading Business Lawyers directory put out by Chamber & Partners Publishing. He also was named a Top Government Contracts Lawyer in 2006 by the Washington Business Journal.

He has extensive litigation experience involving major weapon and space systems, software development, communications systems, technical data rights and classified matters, as well as prime/subcontract disputes, bid protests, injunctive suits, Freedom of Information Act actions and Federal Tort Claims Act cases.

Mr. Vacura previously served as a major in the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Department. With the Air Force, he served as a procurement legal advisor for the Ballistic Missile Organization, as a defense counsel, a prosecutor and as a trial attorney for the Air Force Contract Litigation Division at the Pentagon.

• Represent General Electric in successful “reverse” Freedom of Information Act case in federal district court seeking to enjoin the Air Force’s release of confidential commercial information submitted in a proposal and incorporated into an Air Force contract.
• Represent Northrop Grumman at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the Navy's appeal of a favorable Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals decision involving $30 million in breach of warranty claims related to the Navy’s SQQ-89 antisubmarine warfare system.
• Represented Space Exploration Technologies Inc. in successful protest of the Air Force's award of sole source contracts for space launch services potentially worth billions of dollars. Through corrective action, the agency agreed to compete the contracts on a yearly basis.
• Represented Honeywell International successfully protesting NASA’s contract for test operations services at the Stennis Space Center and the Marshall Space Flight Center. The matter involved multiple protestors challenging NASA’s evaluations of technical issues, and its cost realism analysis.