Spending Watch is The Investigative Journal’s weekly review of federal outlays, drawn from primary records at USAspending.gov, agency contract notices, and independent oversight reports. Figures below are cited to the original source; dollar amounts marked as ceilings or maximums reflect the potential value of a vehicle, not funds obligated.
Federal contracting entered the new fiscal quarter at a brisk pace. Department of War (formerly Department of Defense) contract notices for July 1 and July 2 alone disclosed more than $1.7 billion in new awards and modifications valued at $7.5 million or more, according to the department’s official daily listings. The week’s activity was concentrated in missile defense, counter-drone systems, and a nearly billion-dollar research vehicle — even as the government’s own auditors reported that improper payments across federal programs rose again in fiscal year 2025. Here are the items that stood out.
1. The $151 billion ‘Golden Dome’ backbone keeps expanding
The single largest structural development in federal contracting this year remains the Missile Defense Agency’s Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) vehicle, a multiple-award indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract with a stated maximum value of roughly $151 billion over a 10-year period. The vehicle underpins the administration’s “Golden Dome” homeland missile-defense initiative and allows the agency and other components to compete task orders across artificial intelligence, digital engineering, and directed energy, according to the solicitation posted on SAM.gov.
Records indicate MDA has been onboarding vendors in staggered tranches — 1,014 companies announced on Dec. 2, 2025, followed by 1,086 on Dec. 18, and an additional 340 firms disclosed subsequently, per GovConWire. That brings the pool of eligible contractors to roughly 2,440. It is important to read the $151 billion figure correctly: it is a ceiling, not a commitment. Actual spending depends on task orders yet to be issued. Still, the ceiling is extraordinary — it exceeds one-fifth of the more than $700 billion in prime-contract obligations the federal government has recorded annually in recent fiscal years, according to USAspending.gov data. The sheer breadth of the vendor pool warrants close tracking of which firms actually capture task-order dollars.
2. AeroVironment lands a $500 million counter-drone order
Among the freshest awards, AeroVironment Inc. of Simi Valley, California, received a $500,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract on July 1 for commercial counter-unmanned aerial systems (counter-UAS) and counter-small-UAS capabilities, with an estimated completion date of June 29, 2029, according to the Department of War’s July 1 contract listing (contract W912CH-26-D-A073, Army Contracting Command, Detroit Arsenal).
The award reflects a documented surge in counter-drone procurement as the Pentagon elevates what it calls “Drone Dominance” to a stated priority. Filings indicate the contract is structured as a ceiling under which work locations and funding will be determined with each order — a pattern that, like the SHIELD vehicle, defers the question of how much will ultimately be spent and where. For a capability area that barely registered in defense budgets a decade ago, a half-billion-dollar single award is a marker of how quickly counter-UAS has moved from niche to mainstream. The actual obligation pace, and whether task orders concentrate in a handful of subcontractors, is worth monitoring.
3. A RAND research vehicle worth up to $985 million
On July 2, the RAND National Defense Research Institute in Santa Monica received a task-order contract valued at $452,461,776, with a total potential value of $985,625,480 if all options are exercised, according to the department’s July 2 listing (contract HQ003426DE016, Washington Headquarters Services). The award funds “research, studies, analysis, analytic models, simulations, and wargaming exercises” supporting policy and program planning.
RAND operates a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), and such sole-source vehicles are a long-standing feature of defense analysis. The figure nonetheless illustrates how much the government spends on advisory and analytical work distinct from hardware. The listing notes that no funds were obligated at the time of award, meaning the headline number represents authorized capacity rather than committed cash. Readers tracking the return on this spending should watch for the resulting studies to surface in public form, where fair-use review is possible.
4. A $400 million sole-source award for electrical steel
The Defense Logistics Agency awarded Cleveland-Cliffs Steel Corp. of West Chester, Ohio, a maximum $400,000,000 five-year IDIQ contract for grain-oriented electrical steel, according to the July 1 listing (contract SP8000-25-D-0008). The record states plainly that this was a sole-source acquisition, justified under 10 U.S. Code 3204(a)(3)(A) and Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.103-3, with a performance completion date of Sept. 8, 2030, serving the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force.
Grain-oriented electrical steel is a critical input for transformers and other electromagnetic components, and domestic production is limited — the likely rationale for a single-source justification. Sole-source awards are lawful and often necessary, but they concentrate risk and reduce price competition, which is precisely why oversight bodies scrutinize them. The award is a useful lens on the broader push to reshore defense-critical supply chains, and on the premium the government is willing to pay to secure domestic capacity.
5. A $347.5 million missile-defense contract drew a single bid
Also on July 1, Lockheed Martin Missile and Fire Control of Grand Prairie, Texas, received a $347,500,000 cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for the “development, fabrication and testing of improvements to prototype air and missile defense systems,” with completion expected Dec. 31, 2028 (contract W31P4Q-26-F-0114, Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal). The department’s own listing records a notable detail: bids “were solicited via the internet with one received.”
A cost-plus-incentive-fee structure places more risk on the government than a fixed-price arrangement, and a single-bid competition offers limited assurance that the price reflects a competitive market. Neither fact implies wrongdoing — specialized missile-defense work often has few qualified bidders — but the combination is exactly the sort of pattern that federal procurement auditors flag for review. Data shows single-offer awards remain common in advanced defense programs; whether that reflects genuine market concentration or solicitation design is a recurring question worth pressing.
6. Dell’s $9.7 billion Pentagon software deal
Stepping back to a larger recent award, the Pentagon in late May finalized a five-year, roughly $9.7 billion Core Enterprise Technology Agreement (CETA) with Dell Federal Systems to consolidate Microsoft software licenses across the department, the intelligence community, and the Coast Guard, according to Breaking Defense. Department officials have said the consolidation is projected to save roughly $422 million annually by replacing fragmented, service-by-service purchasing with a single vehicle.
The agreement is significant on procurement grounds alone: it routes billions in enterprise software spending through a single intermediary, a structure that promises efficiency but also concentrates dependence on one vendor. The award drew scrutiny from some outlets, including CNBC, which noted its timing relative to public remarks encouraging federal purchases from the company. The department has defended the deal on cost-consolidation grounds, and no public findings of impropriety have been reported. The verifiable questions for a spending watch are narrower and answerable over time: whether the projected $422 million in annual savings materializes, and whether single-intermediary licensing delivers better terms than the arrangement it replaces.
7. Auditors: improper payments climbed to $186 billion
The week’s most consequential oversight finding did not involve a new contract at all. The Government Accountability Office reported that 15 federal agencies estimated approximately $186 billion in improper payments across 64 programs in fiscal year 2025 — an increase of about $24 billion over the prior year — according to GAO-26-108694. Roughly $153 billion, or about 82 percent, resulted from overpayments. GAO cautioned that the total understates the true figure, because it excludes some programs known to be susceptible to significant errors.
The data shows the problem is both large and persistent: 19 programs reported error rates of at least 10 percent, and six exceeded 25 percent. Health care programs — chiefly Medicare and Medicaid — have historically accounted for the largest share. Cumulatively, executive-branch agencies have estimated about $3 trillion in improper payments since fiscal year 2003. GAO also noted that of 10 matters it referred to Congress in March 2022 to strengthen transparency and accountability, nine remained open as of April 2026. For a spending watch, that unclosed backlog — not any single contract — is arguably the clearest signal of where taxpayer exposure is concentrated. (The full 20-page report is available here.)
8. Billions in grants keep flowing to the states
On the assistance side of the ledger, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has moved substantial sums to states in recent months. FEMA announced $1 billion for state and local disaster-mitigation projects through the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, according to a March 25 FEMA release, and separately said it had unlocked more than $2.2 billion in additional funding to rebuild communities affected by past disasters, per a February 4 release.
More recently, FEMA announced more than $420 million to support emergency management nationwide, opening application windows for the Emergency Management Performance Grant and Emergency Operations Center programs that run through mid-July. Grant disbursements are less visible than headline contract awards but move comparable sums, and the terms — matching requirements, allowable uses, and eventual outcomes — are where oversight value lies. Because these funds pass through state and local governments, the audit trail lengthens, and the ultimate use of the money is often documented only in later reporting.
Patterns worth watching
Three threads run through this week’s records. First, the growing reliance on very large IDIQ ceilings — SHIELD’s $151 billion, the RAND vehicle’s near-$1 billion cap — means published “award values” increasingly describe capacity rather than committed spending; the meaningful figure is the pace of task-order obligations, which merits sustained tracking on USAspending.gov. Second, sole-source and single-bid awards continue to appear even in high-dollar programs, from the $400 million electrical-steel contract to the single-offer missile-defense award; each may be justified, but the aggregate trend bears watching. Third, the persistent rise in improper payments — up $24 billion in a single year, with nine of GAO’s ten reform recommendations still open — suggests that the largest recoverable losses may lie not in any one contract but in the routine machinery of federal disbursement. The Investigative Journal will continue to follow these figures against their primary sources.
Sourcing note: Contract details are drawn from the U.S. Department of War’s official daily contract announcements and SAM.gov; oversight figures from the U.S. Government Accountability Office; and grant figures from FEMA press releases. Where awards represent maximum or ceiling values, that distinction is stated. This report summarizes public records and quotes them sparingly under fair use.