Federal contracting activity in the week of July 13 was dominated by a single Navy award large enough to reshape the U.S. amphibious fleet — and notable for how little competition it drew. Alongside it, oversight bodies published fresh accounting of where federal dollars go astray, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency closed a compressed application window for more than $420 million in grants to states. Below, The Investigative Journal reviews eight spending items from the week, each verified against the government’s own award notices and audit reports.
A $2.2 billion landing-ship contract, awarded on a single bid
On July 13, the Department of War announced that TOTE Services LLC of Jacksonville, Florida, received a $2,206,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract to manage the construction of up to eight Medium Landing Ships for the Navy, according to the department’s daily contract bulletin. Options, if exercised, would raise the cumulative value to $2,605,075,850. The notice states that work will be performed largely in Marinette, Wisconsin (65 percent) and Houma, Louisiana (16 percent), with completion expected by June 2030.
The award is funded in part by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Public Law 119-21) and, in the notice’s words, “directly supports the national effort to revitalize and rebuild American shipbuilding.” The same document, however, records a detail that warrants attention: the contract “was competitively procured via the System for Award Management website (sam.gov), with one offer received.”
For an award of this magnitude, a single responsive bid is unusual and can narrow the government’s leverage on price and schedule. The Navy’s Medium Landing Ship program, previously known as the Light Amphibious Warship, has drawn prior cost-estimate scrutiny from congressional budget analysts, and a one-bid outcome on its construction-management award is precisely the competition pattern that oversight offices routinely urge agencies to monitor. Obligation data should post to USAspending.gov in the coming weeks, allowing independent tracking of how the money is actually drawn down.
$255 million more for submarine sustainment
Days earlier, on July 9, the department disclosed a $255,000,000 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to General Dynamics Electric Boat Corp. of Groton, Connecticut, for engineering, design-agent and planning-yard support for the Navy’s strategic and attack submarines, contract N00024-24-C-2124, per the July 9 bulletin. Records show the work is distributed across Groton (70 percent), Kings Bay, Georgia (13 percent) and Bangor, Washington (10 percent), and that the action was awarded June 30, 2026.
The modification reflects the rising cost of sustaining the submarine force even as the Navy simultaneously builds Columbia- and Virginia-class boats. Cost-plus-fixed-fee arrangements, under which the government reimburses allowable costs plus a set fee, shift more financial risk onto taxpayers than fixed-price deals; auditors have long encouraged agencies to convert mature, well-understood work to fixed-price terms where feasible.
$370 million for engine overhauls — performed overseas, without competition
The July 13 bulletin also recorded a combined $370,226,037 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity award to three foreign vendors — TransCanada Turbines in Airdrie, Alberta; MTU Maintenance Berlin-Brandenburg in Ludwigsfelde, Germany; and TEI-Tusas Engine Industries in Eskisehir, Turkey — for depot-level overhaul of the Navy’s LM2500 and LM2500+ marine gas-turbine engines. Each firm is slated to perform roughly a third of the work abroad.
The notice states plainly that the contract “was not competitively procured,” citing a class justification for using “other than full and open competition” under 10 U.S. Code 3204(a)(1). Sole-source awards are lawful when only certain vendors can perform specialized work, and depot overhaul of proprietary turbines can qualify. Even so, the combination of a nine-figure ceiling, entirely foreign performance and the absence of competition fits the profile that audit offices flag for closer review of pricing and of implications for the domestic industrial base.
A consulting deal with one bidder, and a research award that nearly tripled
Two smaller July 13 awards illustrate recurring accountability themes. The Army awarded The Boston Consulting Group Inc. $19,930,562 to support the “reform and improvement” of its defense-exports process, including analysis and redesign of foreign-military-sales procedures. The notice records that “one bid was solicited with one received” — a management-consulting engagement of roughly $20 million procured without a competitive field.
Separately, the Air Force Research Laboratory approved a $10,557,755 engineering-change modification to a Vanderbilt University contract for an artificial-intelligence effort called the “Assured Neuro-Symbolic Software Prototype.” Filings show the change raised the contract’s total value to $16,230,745 from $5,672,990 — an increase of about 186 percent, nearly tripling the original award. Scope growth of that scale is not inherently improper, but contracts that expand well beyond their initial value are a standard starting point for oversight review of whether the original solicitation captured the true requirement.
$420 million in emergency-management grants, on a 30-day clock
On the grants side, FEMA’s application window for two preparedness programs — worth more than $420 million combined — ran June 15 to July 15, according to the agency’s announcement. The Emergency Management Performance Grant program makes $337 million available to state, local, tribal and territorial governments, while the Emergency Operations Center program offers nearly $83 million to build, upgrade or equip coordination facilities.
Data indicate the EMPG funds are allocated to all 56 states and territories by population, with individual awards ranging from roughly $870,860 to $25,591,548 and a 50 percent local cost-share requirement. The compressed 30-day window drew comment from grant-management specialists, who cautioned that shorter application periods can disadvantage smaller jurisdictions with limited grant-writing capacity — a distributional question worth revisiting once the awards are finalized.
HHS watchdog projects $5.56 billion in recoveries — and flags a 640% billing surge
The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General released its Spring 2026 Semiannual Report to Congress on July 10, projecting roughly $5.56 billion in expected recoveries and savings for the six months ending in March. The office reported a return of about $12.70 for every dollar it spent, according to reporting on the release.
Among its findings, the inspector general identified a roughly 640 percent year-over-year increase in Medicare payments for high-tech “skin substitute” bandages, an anomaly that prompted administrators to announce a new payment cap projected to save more than $9 billion. A more-than-sixfold jump in a single billing category typically signals either an abrupt coding shift or aggressive billing, and the corrective cap suggests the government moved only after the spending had already surged. The episode is a reminder that spending anomalies are often visible in the data well before they are curbed.
$186 billion in improper payments — the wider backdrop
These weekly items sit against a larger backdrop documented by the Government Accountability Office, which reported that federal agencies made an estimated $186 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2025 — up about $24 billion from the prior year, according to the watchdog. Medicare accounted for roughly $57 billion and Medicaid about $37 billion of that total.
The GAO attributed part of the year-over-year increase to programs that had not previously reported estimates rather than solely to new errors — an important caveat against reading the figure as a clean measure of deterioration. Even so, improper payments, which include overpayments, underpayments and disbursements lacking sufficient documentation, have totaled trillions of dollars since 2003 and remain among the most persistent categories of avoidable federal spending.
Patterns worth watching
Two structural developments frame the weeks ahead. The public comment period closed July 13 on an Office of Management and Budget proposal to overhaul the rules governing federal financial assistance, including a provision that would route certain grant approvals through political appointees. Supporters frame the change as accountability; critics warn it could inject politics into routine disbursements. Whatever its merits, the rule — with a planned October 1 effective date — would alter how hundreds of billions of dollars in annual grants are approved and merits close attention.
Meanwhile, the GAO’s 16th annual duplication report, issued May 12, identified 97 new opportunities to cut costs or raise revenue and estimated that its recommendations since 2011 have already yielded about $774.3 billion in financial benefits, with more than $100 billion in additional savings still available, according to the report. The persistence of that unrealized total suggests the constraint on savings is less a shortage of ideas than of follow-through.
The through-line across this week’s records is competition, or its absence. A $2.2 billion contract that drew one bid, a $370 million sole-source award performed entirely abroad, and a $19.9 million consulting engagement with a single respondent are each defensible on their own terms and collectively worth scrutiny. Single-bid procurement is not evidence of wrongdoing, but it is a measurable indicator that oversight offices track for a reason. The Investigative Journal will continue monitoring these awards as obligation data posts to USAspending.gov in the weeks ahead.
Sourcing note: Figures in this report are drawn from the Department of War’s daily contract announcements for July 9 and July 13, 2026; the Federal Emergency Management Agency; the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General; the Government Accountability Office; and the Federal Register. Dollar amounts reflect contract face values and option ceilings as stated in the official notices and may differ from funds ultimately obligated.