The Investigative Journal’s weekly review of federal contracts, grants, and budget data — every figure checked against the original public record.
The federal government enters the final month of fiscal year 2026 this week, and the contracting records suggest agencies are already moving money with the urgency the September 30 deadline typically brings. Last week alone, Pentagon award announcements show two construction contracts of roughly $650 million each signed on the same day, more than half a billion dollars committed to military engines across 48 hours, and a series of fine-print notations that warrant explanation. Below are six developments from the week’s public records, followed by the spending patterns we are watching as the fiscal year closes.
1. Two $650 million construction awards in a single day
On August 27, the Department of War’s daily contract announcements listed two of the largest construction awards of the summer. The Army awarded Brasfield & Gorrie LLC of Birmingham, Alabama, a $658,173,000 contract — with a total cumulative face value of $986,914,726 — to design and build four facilities for component remanufacture, missile maintenance, painting, and storage in Anniston, Alabama, with completion estimated for August 2030. The full $658.2 million came from fiscal 2026 military construction funds obligated at the time of award. Notably, the announcement states only two bids were received.
The same day, the Navy awarded 1080 Constructors of Omaha, Nebraska, a $654,316,365 contract for power reliability and water resiliency upgrades at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine — a project designated P1080, with a maximum value of $682,383,174 including unexercised options and completion expected in December 2031. Records show $166.9 million in fiscal 2026 military construction funds obligated at award, with future increments to follow; three offers were received.
Taken together, the two awards carry more than $1.3 billion in combined contract value committed in one day, and both drew notably thin competition for projects of this size — two and three bidders respectively. Both reflect a broader recapitalization of government-owned industrial facilities, from the Anniston depot complex to the Navy’s four public shipyards. Obligation details will post to USAspending.gov as agencies report the transactions.
2. A $494 million recompete for the government’s background-check pipeline
The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, which conducts the vast majority of federal background investigations, awarded ASRC Research and Technology Solutions an indefinite-delivery contract worth up to $494.4 million to run its Case Processing Operations Center, according to the Pentagon’s August 20 award announcement and subsequent trade press reporting. Work will be performed in Boyers, Pennsylvania, and St. Louis, Missouri, through an ordering period running to late 2031, and filings indicate a first task order of roughly $21.8 million was issued the same day.
Unlike the construction awards above, this recompete drew healthy competition — eight offers, according to the announcement. The contract matters beyond its dollar value: the Case Processing Operations Center underpins the personnel-vetting system that clears federal employees and contractors for access to classified information, a pipeline whose backlogs have drawn congressional scrutiny for years. How the transition is managed, and whether case-processing timelines hold, is worth tracking as task orders flow.
3. Engine room: more than $560 million for military propulsion in 48 hours
Two propulsion awards in two days totaled roughly $560 million. On August 28, the Defense Logistics Agency announced a $319,548,644 modification to a General Electric contract, exercising a multi-year option for J85 engine supplies — the engine that powers, among other aircraft, the Air Force’s decades-old T-38 trainer fleet. The day before, the Navy announced a not-to-exceed $240,754,035 modification to an RTX Corp. (Pratt & Whitney) contract for non-recurring engineering on the F135 engine that powers the F-35, supporting the engine core upgrade’s move into engineering and manufacturing development.
Both underscore the rising cost of keeping military aircraft flying: one sustains an engine designed in the 1950s, the other modernizes the propulsion of the department’s newest fighter. The F135 modification, records show, was not competitively procured — routine for original-equipment engineering work, but a category of spending in which price-reasonableness rests on government negotiation rather than market forces. About $214 million was obligated on the F135 action at award — roughly $175 million in Air Force and Navy research and development funds plus $39 million from F-35 partner nations, according to the announcement.
4. HHS closes August with a behavioral-health grant wave
The Department of Health and Human Services announced $77 million in new behavioral-health grants on August 31, per the agency’s release — $22.2 million for substance-use prevention, $23.6 million for treatment and recovery, $21.8 million for community mental health, and $9.4 million for suicide prevention and crisis services, including 988 Lifeline follow-up programs.
The award caps a month of steady grant disbursements from the department: an announced $96.7 million behavioral-health package on August 17 that HHS says included $63.4 million in formula funding to all 50 states, Washington, and five territories for homelessness-transition services, and a $102 million health-center expansion announced August 13 that the agency says will support 415 new service sites. That is roughly $275 million in announced health grants in under three weeks — a reminder that grant-making, like contracting, accelerates as fiscal-year money approaches expiration.
5. The deficit backdrop: $1.8 trillion and climbing
The Congressional Budget Office’s most recent Monthly Budget Review estimates the federal deficit reached $1.8 trillion through the first ten months of fiscal 2026 — $169 billion more than the same period last year — with outlays up $308 billion, or 5 percent. CBO now projects the full-year deficit will hit $2.1 trillion, some $200 billion above its February baseline.
The revision is driven almost entirely by revenue, not spending: after the Supreme Court’s February 20 ruling that tariffs could not be imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the administration shifted to other trade authorities, and CBO now expects 2026 tariff collections to come in about $250 billion — 60 percent — below earlier projections. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes the government borrowed $431 billion in July alone (a figure inflated by payment-timing shifts) and is approaching $40 trillion in gross national debt. Whatever one’s view of the policy mix, the arithmetic frames every spending decision below it: 5 percent outlay growth atop a $2 trillion deficit leaves little room for error in how agencies obligate year-end funds.
6. Anomalies in the fine print: 2010 money, 2027 money, and a string of corrections
Buried in last week’s award announcements are notations that merit clarification. The Army’s August 28 announcement states that a $9,740,964 technical-support award to Calibre Systems Inc. was funded with “fiscal 2010 operations and maintenance, Army funds.” Operations and maintenance appropriations are generally available for new obligations for one year, and under 31 U.S.C. § 1552 appropriation accounts are closed five years after their availability expires — meaning genuine fiscal 2010 O&M funds would ordinarily have been canceled roughly a decade ago. The same day’s announcements state that an Air Force training award to Kwaan Tech LLC obligated “fiscal 2027 operations and maintenance funds” — money Congress has not yet appropriated, since fiscal 2027 begins October 1.
The likeliest explanation for both is drafting error in the announcements rather than improper obligations — but that is precisely why they warrant correction. The same August 27–28 announcements carried four separate corrections to previously announced awards, including three Defense Logistics Agency orders to Raytheon republished with revised award dates. Accurate public award data is the foundation of spending oversight; when the official record needs this many fixes in a single week, the record-keeping itself becomes a story. We have flagged these items for follow-up.
Patterns worth watching
The September surge. History says the biggest spending month is about to begin. A Mercatus Center analysis of fiscal years 2003–2015 found 16.3 percent of federal contract spending occurred in September — nearly double an even monthly pace — and a National Taxpayers Union Foundation review of fiscal 2019 found September contract actions spiked 42 percent over August. Watch daily award volumes on USAspending.gov over the next four weeks; “use it or lose it” incentives reward speed, not value.
The October 1 cliff. Congress returns with roughly four weeks to reconcile dueling stopgaps: the House passed H.R. 9770 on July 21 by a 220–205 vote, extending fiscal 2026 funding levels through December 4, while the Senate passed its own version August 8 by a bipartisan 90–6, running through December 11 — with the Senate bill also delaying OMB’s proposed rewrite of federal grant-management rules, according to an appropriations tracker. The Senate has yet to pass any of its twelve fiscal 2027 bills. After last fall’s shutdown, the cost of failure is well documented.
Disaster money in peak hurricane season. FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund monthly report current through July 31 was delivered to Congress August 3; outside analysts, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, have warned the fund entered hurricane season low for the second consecutive year. A major storm in September could force emergency restrictions or a supplemental request — both worth watching against the CR timeline.
The error-rate backdrop. As agencies rush year-end money out the door, the Government Accountability Office reports agencies estimated $186 billion in improper payments for fiscal 2025 — including roughly $57 billion in Medicare and $37 billion in Medicaid — with 19 programs reporting error rates of at least 10 percent. September’s volume surge historically lands on top of exactly these control weaknesses.
Sources and methods: This analysis is drawn from official award announcements, agency releases, CBO publications, and oversight reports linked throughout; figures were checked against the cited originals. The companies and agencies named were not contacted for comment prior to publication; any entity referenced may submit a response or correction through this site’s contact page, and we will note substantive replies in future editions.