Yes. He's been a rather vocal opponent of the current buddy-buddy arrangement between ULA and the US Military. Also, since the military tends to have a pretty full plate regarding rocket launches, having a military contract would give lots of reoccurring experience in building up for future stages of his goals.

SpaceX is involved in an ongoing lawsuit against ULA and the Air Force because they want to change their acquisition process into an open bidding process:

http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_26041385/spacex-files-...

In other words, yes, he's interested. It's good money that can help to fund the other stuff you mentioned.

I don't see why it would conflict. He gets to prove his rockets function well enough for DoD needs, and SpaceX gets more money/experience.

AFAIK, following the retirement of the shuttles, the US no longer has a heavy lift capability. Looking to indigenous companies for filling that void is probably a medium/long term goal.

The US still has heavy lift capability from the Delta IV, which will be used for the first few launches of the Orion system. It isn't human rated, though, with that replacement coming in a few years with the Space Launch System/

As much as I love civilian space programs... they've always just been excuses for designing incredible rocket based weapons...

"Hey look, we can get a friggin lander to the moon. we can also drop enough nukes from orbit to completely obliterate you too!"

diversification could make the company more robust without sacrificing his vision.

I believe Musk is interested in bringing in money to fund his vision of bringing humans to space. Developing cheaper ways to bring humans to space is very very expensive as we all know. And having military contracts is very very lucrative.