FAR and DFARS rulemaking, executive orders, and acquisition policy shifts — explained in plain English.
Industry and legal commenters urged the FAR Council to write rules on agency use of AI in proposal evaluations into the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, proposing disclosure, human verification and contract-file documentation after the comment period on the second batch of overhaul rules closed Oct. 19.
Read the story →The Pentagon picked Poland to host a new European maintenance, repair and overhaul facility for Lockheed Martin's PAC-3 interceptors, with Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden leading supply chain integration. The site will not build missiles; cost, location and schedule remain unannounced.
DoD's own CMMC RFI data, reported by Federal News Network, shows NIST 800-171 controls and CUI marking, not certification, drive contractor costs, with average CMMC assessments at $47,000 as the 75-day review passes 100 days.
HD Hyundai USA and Kiewit Maritime plan HD Kiewit Shipbuilding LLC, a joint venture to build a new Gulf Coast shipyard for naval auxiliary and commercial vessels plus ship blocks and modules. Construction is targeted for 2027, full operations for 2029, with up to 3,000 jobs at full scale.
Sens. Warren, Ernst, Grassley and Slotkin want DoD to apply its Aug. 18 cost-transparency directive to contracts under the $10M certified data threshold and to disqualify contractors that refuse to share pricing data. Answers are due Nov. 3.
An NRC final rule effective Nov. 25 lets commercial reactor applicants cite prior DOE or Department of War authorizations and test data to show their designs work safely, implementing Executive Order 14300 while keeping independent NRC review.
An Oct. 20 DPCAP memo gives defense buyers templates and contract language to require LLM vendors to document compliance with Trump's truth-seeking and ideological neutrality principles, implementing OMB M-26-04, which ties the requirements to payment and default termination.
SBA awarded more than $7 million to create nine new Regional Innovation Clusters, five of them defense-focused, bringing the network to 12 after DOGE cuts. The two-year contracts skip the AI and cyber focus of the 2025 solicitation, and the White House's initial FY2027 budget zeroed out the program.
GSA is auditing federal contracts held by 689 firms suspended from SBA's 8(a) program, whose awards carry a $5.5 billion collective ceiling, checking for improper awards, inaccurate statements and pass-through deals and referring suspected fraud to the OIG and Justice Department.
The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin agreed on a 10-year framework for F-35 Lots 21-30: 156 jets a year, 850 for the U.S., and at least $7 billion in Lockheed investment. It still needs multiyear procurement authority and FY2027 appropriations from Congress, and pricing and schedules are not set.
A new Air Force fighter force structure report sets a 1,509-jet goal for 2035, with F-35s at about 40 percent of the fleet. Hitting it depends on Congress funding more than the 62 fighters in the FY2027 request and on Lockheed Martin and Boeing ramping production. A new-build F-16G decision is not urgent.
The FY26 NDAA's new 10 U.S.C. 2808a lets the military services use other transactions for facility construction and repair, replacing a two-project, $300 million pilot and allowing noncompetitive follow-on awards, subject to 14-day congressional notice.
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