Acquisition
Large lettering marks the main entrance to the General Services Administration (GSA) headquarters on July 23, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by J. David Ake/Getty Images)
OneGov AI deals are ending, but behavioral dependency might lock in federal workers
K. Sophie Will, FedScoop
The General Services Administration’s highly successful OneGov program, which provided millions of federal workers with access to state-of-the-art AI tools at deeply discounted rates, faces a critical transition as key agreements expire. While the initiative has saved the government over $1 billion, procurement experts warn that these expiring promotions could trigger a severe "behavioral lock-in," forcing agencies to pay premium prices or risk the rise of unsanctioned shadow AI.
- Behavioral Lock-In: Procurement experts warn that the true risk of these ultra-cheap promotions—priced as low as $0.47 to $1 per user—is institutional dependency, which leaves agencies with minimal negotiating leverage once workflows are deeply integrated.
- Uncertain Renewal Pricing: Renewals will not be automatic, and vendors are expected to transition from nominal promotional prices to higher, usage-based rates that reflect actual federal consumption data.
Related: Feature Comment: Twenty-Five Cent AI: The Hidden Costs of Promotional AI Deals
The Case for Case Studies: Leveraging Case-Based Learning for Strategic Innovation in Defense Acquisition
Joseph Alexander & Denisha Bennett, Naval Postgraduate School
In today’s complex acquisition environment, marked by rapidly evolving technologies, shifting policy priorities, and highly scrutinized resource decisions, it is imperative that the DoD cultivate the reasoning and judgement skills required of its acquisition professionals. One approach, as argued by former Havard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria, is the use of case-based instruction, which can develop professional judgment and problem-solving skills more effectively than conventional lecture-based approaches. Despite its success in sectors like business and law, case-based learning remains underutilized in defense acquisition, though its expanded use is now specifically directed under Executive Order 14265, Modernizing Defense Acquisition. In response to this mandate, this research analyzes current shortcomings in DoD acquisition education and presents a framework for the design, development, and implementation of case studies tailored to the defense acquisition environment. Using a real-world program as the foundation, this project also delivers a case study and an accompanying teaching plan.
Fiasco in the Factory: Taxpayers Funded a $533 Million Artillery Plant That Made Nothing
Jesse Coburn, Propublica
A $533 million taxpayer-funded artillery shell factory in Mesquite, Texas, managed by General Dynamics and Turkish subcontractor Repkon, failed to produce a single usable shell due to severe machinery malfunctions and rushed contracting. Despite these failures, the defense contractor faced no public accountability and instead received billions of dollars in subsequent Pentagon awards.
- Rushed No-Bid Contracts: Leveraging congressional moves to bypass defense procurement guardrails, the Army awarded General Dynamics no-bid contracts worth nearly $600 million to build a new factory that would use unvetted, unproven "flow-forming" equipment from Turkish subcontractor Repkon.
- Factory Failures: Robot arms regularly caught fire and "went rogue," while crucial press machines had to be beaten with sledgehammers and routinely mangled steel shells into twisted shapes resembling soft-serve ice cream.
- Misleading Public Claims: While workers sat idle and machines failed, General Dynamics' CEO and Army officials repeatedly assured investors and the public that the Texas facility was rapidly increasing munitions capacity without major delays.
- Dubious AI Pivot: To fix the broken facility, General Dynamics recently partnered with Deterrence — a three-year-old startup run by founders with no defense experience — to implement unproven AI-enabled capabilities.
- Zero Consequences: After eight missed deadlines, the Army eventually halted work on two production lines. But General Dynamics was never penalized, kept all $533 million, received $26.3 million in progress payments, and has since received $2.5 billion in new contracts. Repkon's new American offshoot has since received a $435 million contract to stand up a new TNT factory.
Related: Evaluation of the DoW’s Capability and Capacity to Produce 155-Millimeter Artillery Ammunition (Report No. DOWIG-2026-095)
Defense & Strategy
U.S. Airmen participate Bamboo Eagle 25-3, a combat-realistic scenario in combined live-fly, virtual, and constructive exercise, at the 705th Combat Training Squadron, also known as the Distributed Mission Operations Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, on Aug. 5, 2025. (Photo by Airman Alenne Mojica)
AI and the Risks of Tearing Down an Old System
Jordan Kane, War on the Rocks
The American military has pushed hard to integrate artificial intelligence into combat operations, but the current speed of adoption has dangerously outpaced the Pentagon’s ability to verify system safety. While recent conflicts have demonstrated that AI can drastically accelerate targeting and operational tempo, this article argues that the Department of Defense lacks the critical evaluation infrastructure, workforce, and data architecture necessary to catch lethal errors or "hallucinations."
- Reliability Gaps: Frontier AI models fail frequently under stress, hallucinating routinely on short factual queries and fabricating answers about nonexistent entities up to 94 percent of the time.
- Automation Bias: Because AI models output highly articulate and precise-looking targeting recommendations, they risk causing excessive operator deference, which can reduce human oversight to a mere formality
- Depleted Oversight Capacity: The Pentagon's primary independent evaluation offices are critically understaffed, with the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation's staff halved and nearly 100 programs dropped from its oversight list.
- Five Systemic Shortfalls: The military's broad AI integration is bottlenecked by severe deficiencies in specialized workforce recruitment, classified computing access, data ownership rights, continuous security accreditation, and independent evaluation.
Government Reports
Alaska's Graphite Creek, the largest known graphite deposit in America, received a $37.5 million award under DPA authorities to accelerate development of a vertically integrated supply chain that includes advanced manufacturing and recycling. (Image courtesy of Mining News North; Shane Lasley.)
The DPA Modernization Act of 2026: An Overview
Congressional Research Service
Analysis of a Potential Cyber Military Service
Congressional Research Service
Defense Infrastructure Funding in the 119th Congress
Congressional Research Service
Research
Image created by ChatGPT
Defense Logistics Agency Aluminum Wargame
Julie Kelly, Paul Richanbach, et al, Institute for Defense Analyses
To address the severe decline of the U.S. domestic aluminum industry and mitigate critical supply chain vulnerabilities, the Defense Logistics Agency convened a joint government-industry wargame evaluate the resiliency of the U.S. aluminum supply chain for national defense. The study highlights a dangerous decline in domestic manufacturing, noting that the United States currently relies heavily on foreign imports for both primary aluminum and high purity aluminum (HPA), which are vital for advanced weapon systems. To mitigate these vulnerabilities, the text proposes a multi-faceted strategy focused on stockpiling strategic materials, securing reliable and affordable energy, rebuilding aging industrial infrastructure, expanding the skilled workforce, and strengthening international partnerships to ensure a steady flow of materials during potential military conflicts.
Feature Comment: Twenty-Five Cent AI: The Hidden Costs of Promotional AI Deals
Jessica Tillipman, The Government Contractor
The General Services Administration’s OneGov initiative offers federal agencies access to leading AI platforms—including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Copilot, and Perplexity—at promotional prices ranging from free to one dollar per agency. This Feature Comment examines how these nominal price points function as the procurement equivalent of loss-leader pricing: low enough to accelerate adoption while obscuring lifecycle costs, operational dependency, and diminished negotiating leverage at renewal. Drawing on the Federal Acquisition Regulation’s buying-in framework (FAR 3.501), switching-cost theory, and publicly available reseller pricing data, the Comment demonstrates that the gap between promotional and post-promotional pricing can be substantial—and that most renewal terms are not publicly disclosed. It analyzes how behavioral and organizational lock-in develops during promotional periods through workflow integration, institutional habit formation, and the erosion of in-house capacity, and explains why exit rights not secured before adoption are difficult to negotiate afterward. The Comment identifies transparency and governance gaps in the current OneGov structure and proposes a risk mitigation framework organized at the contract, operational, and program levels—including binding post-promotional pricing, structured pilot constraints, dependency tracking, and uniform public disclosure of lifecycle terms as a condition of OneGov participation.
Events
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
Creative Disruptors by the Lakes
Creative Defense Foundations
18-19 September 2026
St. Paul, MN
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
Defense Conference 26: Operationalizing Acquisition for the Warfighter
Professional Services Council
30 October 2026
Crystal City, VA & Online
One more thing...
Secretary of the Navy Dan A. Kimball, (right), inspects a model of the Navy’s atomic submarine, the Nautilus after presenting Captain Hyman George Rickover, USN, (left), the Gold Star in Lieu of the Second Legion of Merit Award at ceremonies in his office at the Pentagon. Photograph released July 7, 1952. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Hyman Rickover and the Birth of Nuclear Power
Thane C. Clare, War on the Rocks
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover single-handedly propelled the United States into the atomic age by pioneering both naval nuclear propulsion and the world's first civilian nuclear power plant. His success relied on a unique combination of relentless personal accountability, aggressive bureaucratic maneuvering, and rigorous engineering risk mitigation.
- Double Revolutionary Impact: Admiral Rickover was the singular driving force behind both the U.S. nuclear Navy—which has operated submarines and aircraft carriers for over 70 years without a single major reactor accident—and the global civil nuclear power sector.
- Bureaucratic Insurgency Tactics: To launch the program amid declining postwar budgets, Rickover bypassed traditional naval channels to directly petition leaders of the Atomic Energy Commission, successfully securing the crucial backing of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz.
- Rigorous Risk Mitigation: Rather than scaling production slowly, Rickover minimized supply and schedule risks by forcing industrial partners to scale up pure zirconium manufacturing early and building land-based prototypes to exact shipboard specifications.
- Parallel Engineering Paths: To ensure success under tight timelines, he developed pressurized water and liquid sodium reactor cooling technologies in parallel, ultimately establishing pressurized water as the Navy's fleet standard.
- Civilian Power Pioneer: Alongside his military duties, Rickover directed the construction of the Shippingport, Pennsylvania reactor—the world's first commercial atomic plant—which supplied emissions-free grid power for over 30 years.
- Absolute Personal Responsibility: Rickover's career demonstrates that successful defense innovation requires a single, self-motivated leader who holds themselves personally accountable for failure rather than relying on diffuse bureaucratic processes.
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