Acquisition
Joe Bullinger/U.S. Navy
Contractor alleges Army inappropriately used AI to make $450M contract award
Christian Robles, NextGov
Trax International Corporation is suing the Army over a $450 million contract award, alleging that unchecked AI "hallucinations" unfairly weakened their bid for mission support services at White Sands Missile Range. The lawsuit highlights growing concerns regarding the lack of transparency and human oversight in the government's use of generative artificial intelligence for procurement evaluations.
- Transparency Gap: Records provided by the Army during an initial GAO protest reportedly failed to clarify whether specific strengths and weaknesses originated from human members of the evaluation board or automated AI tools.
- Reporting Failures: Industry experts warn that many agencies are not reporting AI procurement use as "high-impact," which allows them to bypass mandatory risk-management practices and public disclosure requirements.
- Rising Protests: Legal analysts anticipate a surge in future bid protests as the "ungoverned and undisclosed" use of generative AI tools leads to more procedural errors throughout the federal acquisition process.
Related: Lawsuit over Army’s use of AI in contract award could increase transparency around proposal evaluations
Top cover and clear metrics: How to make the new PAE structure work
Tim W. Cooke, Breaking Defense
To successfully reform defense acquisition, new Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs) must move beyond organizational restructuring by providing believable, executable "top cover" for risk-taking and implementing outcome-based performance metrics.
- Rational Risk-Aversion: Contracting officers currently default to slow, standard procedures because following them protects their careers from audits and protests, whereas using flexible methods like oral presentations or Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs) often leaves them personally exposed to professional consequences.
- Credible Protection: Real "top cover" requires a written, public commitment from PAEs to defend specific flexible contracting decisions, providing the legal and institutional support necessary for the workforce to prioritize speed over procedural perfection.
- Strategic Sequencing: Acquisition simulations suggest that providing top cover must precede new metrics; removing professional risk first allows the workforce to adopt faster methods before their performance is measured against new results.
Defense & Strategy
A US Navy sailor, assigned to the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Roosevelt (DDG 80), uses a sextant to measure the sun's angle during a Strait of Hormuz transit. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Indra Beaufort)
Updating Navy warships at the speed of software
James Day and Justin Fanelli, Breaking Defense
The U.S. Navy has implemented over-the-air software updates for critical combat systems, enabling warships to modernize their capabilities while at sea and replacing multi-year maintenance cycles with rapid, real-time adaptation.
- Real-Time Upgrades: What once required years of scheduled maintenance and formal testing can now be delivered directly to ships while they are underway. This allows critical combat systems—including radar, sonar, and weapons—to be updated with the same ease as a smartphone, ensuring the fleet always possesses the most current technological advantages.
- Integrated Oversight: A dedicated Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Mission Systems now oversees integrated capabilities, ensuring that end-to-end mission threads succeed at the seams.
- Digital Seapower: Traditional seapower metrics like range and payload are now joined by "update speed" and "adaptation speed" as defining measures of fleet readiness.
Addressing and Amending “Attritability” of Unmanned Vehicular Systems: Why Cost as a Strategy Undermines National Power
James Giordano, Small Wars Journal
In the age of unmanned systems, the military concept of attritability must be redefined beyond mere monetary cost to include a comprehensive multidimensional assessment of strategic, industrial, and political consequences.
- Beyond Unit Cost: Current definitions of "attritability" are dangerously narrow; a true assessment must account for the strategic, political, and industrial consequences of losing unmanned platforms beyond their simple sticker price.
- Replenishment Realism: The authors propose a refined definition focusing on "replenishment realism," where systems are considered attritable only if they can be rapidly replaced at combat tempo through a resilient industrial surge.
- Hidden Technology Risks: Even inexpensive systems carry sophisticated software and sensors; their loss can compromise sensitive intelligence, reveal operational concepts, and allow adversaries to reverse-engineer critical American technology.
- New Tolerance Scale: A proposed 1–7 attrition-tolerance scale categorizes assets from "Fully Expendable" to "Sovereign Imperative," providing a precise language for requirements writers and industry partners.
- Auditable Decision Matrix: A 10-criteria matrix evaluates systems on factors like supply-chain resilience and potential capture risk, ensuring no single factor—like cost—dominates the acquisition process.
Industry
On the assembly line at an electric vehicle parts factory in St. Clair, Michigan, March 2025 (Rebecca Cook / Reuters)
How to Reindustrialize America: The Case for a Strategic Investment Fund
Jake Sullivan, Foreign Affairs
To maintain global leadership and counter China’s state-backed technological rise, the United States must establish a Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) to bridge the gap between innovation and industrial capacity. This federal enterprise would align public finance with long-term national security priorities, reviving the American "tech stack" through coordinated economic statecraft.
- Innovation-Production Chasm: Decades of offshoring have broken critical feedback loops between design and manufacturing, eroding the skilled workforce and "process knowledge" necessary for complex development.
- Market Failure: Modern capital markets prioritize short-term efficiency over long-term resilience, creating a "scale-up" financing gap for advanced manufacturing startups trying to move from prototype to production. Strategic sectors like rare-earth refining or shipbuilding struggle to attract private capital due to high upfront costs and unpredictable policy shifts.
- Coordinated Statecraft: A $50 billion SIF would partner with private investors while a cabinet-level Strategic Investment Council synchronizes investments with procurement, tariffs, and regulation.
- Rigorous Oversight: To prevent favoritism, the SIF would be governed by an independent board and professional staff operating under transparent criteria and audited return targets.
Government Reports
Soldiers with the 123rd Classification and Inspection Company (CICo) get hands-on experience during annual training April 22, 2026, at Anniston Army Depot, Alabama. (U.S. Army photo by Pachari Middleton)
Army Depot Maintenance: Information on Workload, Workforce, and Challenges
Government Accountability Office
Space Force: Additional Actions Needed to Address Workforce Challenges
Government Accountability Office
International Agreements: DOD Has Opportunities to Improve Internal Communication and Oversight
Government Accountability Office
Defense Primer: U.S. Space Force
Congressional Research Service
MQ-25 Stingray: Background and Issues for Congress
Congressional Research Service
Research
Chief Logistics Specialist Froiland Poblete, a Logistics Support Representative (LSR) From Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) Fleet Logistics Center Puget Sound, watches as the guided-missile destroyer USS Chafee (DDG 90) arrives in Portland Oregon June 2 for Portland Fleet Week. (Courtesy photo)
Small Business Participation in Naval Supply Systems Command Enterprise
Ann Adams, Cassandra Kovac, & Rhiannon Ladwig, Naval Postgraduate School
Small businesses are vital to defense innovation and supply chain resilience, yet participation in Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) contracting has declined significantly over the past decade. This research project examines the barriers that impede small business engagement with NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Centers (FLCs) across the United States. Using a mixed-methods design that combines quantitative achievement data with qualitative input from small business professionals, the study identifies discrepancies between federal policy intent and field-level execution.. Performance disparities among FLCs further highlighted challenges that are not fully addressed by existing policies and practices. Overall, these systemic issues create information gaps and erode small-business confidence in naval contracting. This project recommends that improving the accuracy and accessibility of NAVSUP small-business resources, enhancing customer training in requirement development and market research, and simplifying internal communication processes can reduce unnecessary barriers.
Improving Cooperation in Government Purchasing Through Formal-Relational Contracting
Ole Helby Petersen, Matthew Potoski & Lena Brogaard, Public Administration Review
This article introduces a framework for formal-relational contracting (FRC) in public sector contexts, where rigid regulations, competing values, and market imperfections make cooperation both difficult and valuable. FRC promotes cooperation through contract terms defining shared goals, guiding principles, and governance mechanisms. We present the theoretical foundations of FRC and examine its potential through 320 government contract management decision simulations where public contract managers acted as government buyers and business sellers facing sequential choices under both FRC contracts and the more conventional formal contracting approach. The results show that FRC increased managers' cooperative behavior by around 30 percentage points compared to formal contracting. Qualitative evidence further suggests that FRC shifted managers' mindsets from adversarial to cooperative. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for how FRC can enhance cooperation and mutual value in government contracting.
Defense Requirements Planning in Comparative Organizations
Megan McKernan, RAND
This RAND Corporation report evaluates the defense requirements planning of four nations—China, Russia, Australia, and the United Kingdom—to provide the U.S. Department of War with strategies for modernizing its acquisition system. By examining how adversaries and allies manage military procurement and technological integration, the authors identify critical methods for improving speed to capability in an era of emerging threats.
Events
TechNet Augusta 2026
AFCEA
17-20 August 2026
Augusta, GA
MODSIM World 2026
National Training & Simulation Association (NTSA)
18-19 August 2026
Alexandria, VA
Fed Supernova
STATION Austin
18-20 August 2026
Austin, TX
DIB Accelerator 2026
Advanced Technology International (ATI)
25 - 27 August 2026
Philadelphia, PA
Prodacity 2026: Uncharted
Rise8
25-27 August 2026
Nashville, TN
Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference & Exhibition
NDIA
8 – 10 September 2026
Washington, DC
OCEANS 2026 Monterey
IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society (OES)
21-24 September 2026
Monterey, CA
Naval Forge 20XX: Warfare Innovation Continuum Workshop
Naval Postgraduate School
21-24 September 2026
Monterey, CA & Online
BlueTech Nexus
Naval Postgraduate School & FLEETWERX
22 September 2026
Monterey, CA
One more thing...
The future destroyer USS William Charette was christened on Aug. 1, 2026. Photo courtesy of Bath Iron Works.
Navy christens new destroyer named for corpsman who earned Medal of Honor
Nicholas Slayton, Task & Purpose
The U.S. Navy christened the future USS William Charette on August 1, 2026, at Bath Iron Works in Maine, naming the guided-missile destroyer after a heroic Korean War hospital corpsman. This Arleigh Burke-class warship honors Charette’s "conspicuous gallantry" during a brutal 1953 battle where he repeatedly braved enemy fire to save the lives of his fellow Marines.
- Valiant Sacrifice: During the intense defense of Outpost Vegas in March 1953, Charette heroically threw himself on top of a wounded Marine to shield him from a nearby grenade explosion, sustaining facial wounds in the process.
- Relentless Care: Even after being knocked unconscious and losing his medical supplies to a blast, Charette resumed his duties for five days of fighting, utilizing strips of his own uniform as improvised bandages to treat casualties.
- Highest Honor: Originally recommended for the Navy Cross, Charette’s recognition was upgraded to the Medal of Honor, which was presented by President Eisenhower in 1954 for actions "above and beyond the call of duty".
- Living Legend: Charette holds the rare distinction of being the only Navy hospital corpsman among five Korean War recipients to receive the nation’s highest military award without it being a posthumous honor.
- Lifelong Service: Following his wartime heroics with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, Charette served on nuclear submarines and dedicated 26 years to the Navy before retiring as a master chief hospital corpsman in 1977. He died in 2012.
- Ceremonial Event: The christening was attended by Maine Governor Janet Mills, state senators, and fellow Medal of Honor recipient Retired Marine Col. Harvey C. Barnum Jr., who spoke on the ship’s formidable capabilities.
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