It is not the first time that Boeing did something space-related for the military or NASA. The big difference is that while on earlier contracts they just asked for more money time and again, this time they are on a fixed budget and have to show results before getting paid.
And they cannot claim it was not enough money to get people up and down safely. From the same pot, SpaceX got about half as much as Boeing got. Boeing cried foul about this "wasting" money on an unexperienced upstart! And now look where both companies are with their project: SpaceX is happily going up and down like an elevator, and Boeing, with twice the money and years of delay, launched people into space with a known-defekt spaceship.