Spending Watch is The Investigative Journal’s weekly review of notable federal contract awards, grant activity, and budget developments, drawn from official award announcements and public oversight records.
This edition covers official announcements from July 28 through August 7 — a stretch that delivered one of the largest procurement commitments in recent memory, a government audit questioning the reliability of published federal savings claims, and fresh movement on next year’s spending bills. Every figure below is drawn from official award announcements, audit reports, and budget documents linked throughout. Award data for all federal contracts and grants is searchable at USAspending.gov.
1. Army converts Patriot missile deal into a $53.9 billion multiyear commitment
The headline number of the period came from the Army’s missile portfolio. According to the Department of War’s July 30 contract announcements, Lockheed Martin Corp. was awarded a $53,859,843,289 firm-fixed-price modification for the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) production program, converting a one-year undefinitized contract action into a seven-year multiyear procurement for PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptors. The modification brings the contract’s total cumulative face value to roughly $58.6 billion, with work spread across more than a dozen states and an estimated completion date of March 31, 2035.
Two details stand out in the announcement. First, the award was structured as a conversion of an undefinitized contract action — an arrangement in which work begins before final terms are negotiated — into a definitized multiyear deal. Second, the announcement states that no funds were obligated at the time of the award, meaning actual outlays will flow through future appropriations. Multiyear procurement requires production-rate commitments across seven years, a bet that demand for air-defense interceptors will remain elevated through the mid-2030s. How the definitized pricing compares to prior annual buys is a question worth pursuing as obligation data posts to USAspending.gov.
2. Nearly $11.9 billion obligated in a single day for submarine construction
A day earlier, the Navy moved an unusually large volume of money at once. The July 29 announcements show General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls’ Newport News Shipbuilding received incentive contract modifications covering construction of five Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines (Build II, SSBN 828-832), nine Virginia-class attack submarines (Block VI, SSN 814-822) plus a tenth shipset of material, and shipbuilder productivity investments.
The funding table attached to the announcement indicates approximately $11.88 billion was obligated at award, including about $6.44 billion in fiscal 2026 shipbuilding funds, $3.74 billion in fiscal 2025 shipbuilding funds, and roughly $1.27 billion in fiscal 2025 maritime industrial base funds. Work runs through July 2038. The maritime industrial base component — money aimed at supplier development and workforce rather than hulls directly — has grown into a multibillion-dollar funding stream of its own, and records suggest it deserves sustained tracking as the submarine programs continue to face schedule pressure.
3. GAO: DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” savings claims lack transparency
On August 6, the Government Accountability Office publicly released GAO-26-108615, an audit of the Department of Government Efficiency’s public savings tracker. As of July 7, 2026, the Wall of Receipts reported $110 billion in savings across contract, grant, and lease terminations. GAO found that some estimates are incorrect or lack supporting evidence: the audit states DOGE did not use its own stated methodology for the majority of contract-savings calculations, and that insufficient information was provided to verify the method behind 96 percent of DOGE-reported grant savings.
The report also found the tracker overstated lease-termination savings by more than $80 million, and that 108 of 264 listed lease terminations — about $15.3 million of $53.5 million in claimed lease savings — were already in process before DOGE was established. In one example, the audit says DOGE reported $1.7 billion in savings on a Defense Health Agency IT services contract that, in the end, was neither terminated nor reduced in scope, value, or funding — so no savings were achieved. GAO was careful to note its review of selected contracts did identify potential cost savings in some cases; its recommendation is for clearer disclosure of methodology and data limitations, not a finding that all claimed savings are illusory. Whether that recommendation is implemented is a story this publication will follow.
4. Deficit tracker: $1.4 trillion through nine months
The Congressional Budget Office’s most recent Monthly Budget Review estimates the federal deficit reached $1.4 trillion over the first nine months of fiscal year 2026 — about $35 billion more than the same period a year earlier — including an estimated $126 billion deficit in June alone. The July figures, covering ten months of the fiscal year, are due from CBO in the coming days and will show whether the gap with last year’s pace is widening or narrowing as tariff collections and the effects of last year’s reconciliation law work through the ledger.
For longer-run context, CBO’s budget publications and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s tracking work remain the most current public references. The nine-month figure matters for the weeks ahead: agencies typically accelerate obligations before the fiscal year closes on September 30, a pattern visible in prior years’ fourth-quarter award data.
5. Raytheon’s missile week: $745 million for SM-3, $536 million for TOW
The August 7 announcements show two sizable missile awards to Raytheon. The Missile Defense Agency issued a noncompetitive, undefinitized contract action with a base value of $745,387,095 for Standard Missile-3 Block IIA all-up rounds, serving both U.S. requirements and a Japan Ministry of Defense foreign military sales case — with roughly $277.7 million of the initial obligation coming from Japanese FMS funds. The same day, the Army awarded Raytheon a $535,975,860 modification for full-rate production of the TOW weapon system, bringing that contract’s cumulative face value to about $750.8 million.
The SM-3 award repeats a structural pattern noted above: an undefinitized action, this time noncompetitive, in which work begins before price terms are final. Defense acquisition regulations permit the practice for urgent requirements, but definitization timelines and final negotiated prices are where taxpayer exposure lives, and both awards merit follow-up once definitized values post to public databases.
6. Competition corner: billion-dollar ceilings, single bidders
Several of the week’s largest ceiling values went to awards with limited or no competition, according to the department’s own announcements. Northrop Grumman received a $1.84 billion ceiling sole-source IDIQ for sustainment and production of the LITENING advanced targeting pod. The Army awarded the University of Alaska Fairbanks a $499 million research IDIQ for geophysical detection of nuclear proliferation in which one bid was solicited and one received. And an Aug. 3-announced $271.5 million AEGIS fire-control production award to Raytheon was not competitively procured, per the announcement, under the statutory exception for requirements only one responsible source can satisfy.
By contrast, competition remains healthy where the market allows it: a $500 million counter-drone procurement IDIQ awarded to CACI drew 50 bids, and a $981 million Space Force test-and-training multiple-award vehicle drew 20 offers and 15 awardees, the July 30 announcements show. The pattern is consistent with a long-running dynamic in defense contracting — commodity-adjacent services attract crowded fields while missile and sensor production concentrates in incumbent primes. Sole-source concentration in munitions amid surging demand is a structural cost-risk story we intend to keep examining.
7. The spending calendar: House passes a CR into December
Ahead of the September 30 funding deadline, the House passed H.R. 9770, a continuing resolution funding the government into early December 2026, by a vote of 220-205, according to the House Appropriations Committee. The committee frames the early action as a way to preserve progress on full-year fiscal 2027 bills; the Senate’s slower pace on its versions remains the variable to watch. The Congressional Research Service status table tracks bill-by-bill movement.
For spending watchers, the practical significance is twofold: a CR would hold most agencies at current rates into December, and the compressed calendar raises the odds that final fiscal 2027 decisions land in an omnibus negotiation — historically the environment in which unrelated spending provisions attract the least scrutiny.
What warrants deeper investigation
Four patterns from this review merit sustained attention. First, undefinitized contract actions on marquee missile programs — both the PAC-3 conversion and the SM-3 award began work before final pricing — where GAO has long flagged cost risk; definitization terms should be checked when they post. Second, the fourth-quarter obligation surge: with roughly eight weeks left in fiscal 2026, award volume typically spikes, and end-of-year spending quality is a perennial oversight question. Third, follow-through on GAO’s DOGE recommendation — whether the Wall of Receipts adds methodology disclosures — which bears directly on whether claimed savings can be independently verified. Fourth, the government-wide improper payments baseline: agencies reported an estimated $186 billion in improper payments for fiscal 2025 across 64 programs, per GAO, up about $24 billion from the prior year — a figure that dwarfs most line-item savings debates and remains the largest documented pool of avoidable federal cost.
Methodology and right of reply: This analysis is compiled from official Department of War contract announcements, GAO reports, CBO publications, and congressional committee releases, each linked above. No allegation of wrongdoing is made against any company, university, or agency named; contract award structures described (sole-source, single-bid, undefinitized) are drawn from the government’s own announcements. Entities named were not contacted for comment for this data review and are welcome to respond; corrections are published promptly.