Good Afternoon. On September 14, Deputy Secretary Feinberg signed a memo promising that no discretionary actions, studies, or working groups would slow down his industrial base reforms.
The first four deliverables were due yesterday, but as of this morning, none have been published.
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here
🎯 THE SIGNAL
The Fostering One Strong Industrial Base memo gave the department 30 days to deliver several items: a consortium policy on project eligibility, a direct-award preference, fee transparency, and a ban on applying cost accounting standards under different names to CAS-exempt awards and other transactions, which contractors call shadow CAS.
The same deadline applied to a joint enforcement statement to protect efficiency savings on fixed-price work, so if a contractor comes in under budget, they keep the difference, and the government only benefits from future savings. It also included procedures for the August supplier cost-transparency memo. Thirty days from September 14 was Wednesday, October 14.
We checked the DPCAP policy pages and the class deviation library this morning, but found nothing new. The deviation page was last updated October 8, and its latest entry is about Russian fossil fuels.
One deliverable may have arrived ahead of schedule. DPCAP principal director John Tenaglia signed the implementation procedures for the supplier cost memo on October 1, and the details are more favorable to industry than the headlines suggested. Any data link into contractor systems will be voluntary, will only allow data to be sent out, and will require formal rulemaking.
The sector profit benchmarks are not caps. However, there are real consequences. If a contractor refuses to provide required certified cost data, they will get an immediate DCAA audit. If cost data reports are late on larger programs, a 30-day demand letter will be sent, followed by withholds.
A missed deadline, with no announcement, still sends a message. If the documents were signed but not released, industry is left without clear rules, even though contracting officers are already bound by them. If the documents are not finished, it shows that the memo’s promise of no delays does not meet the reality of the department’s pace. The next deadlines will show if this is a one-time slip or a trend. The key dates to watch are coming up.
By October 29, the memo requires a 15-business-day standard for commerciality determinations, with previous determinations staying in place unless a head of contracting activity reverses them in writing, plus interim other-transaction policy.
By November 13, proposals are due to make CAS exemption the default. These two deadlines directly affect the companies this newsletter serves. A commerciality determination that takes 15 days instead of a year can mean the difference between a successful commercial-item strategy and one that fails during review.
Clock | What It Means for You |
|---|---|
October 14 deliverables, no public release | If you negotiate OTs through a consortium, the fee-transparency policy that governs your next agreement may already exist. Ask your agreements officer whether guidance has reached them. |
October 29, the 15-day commerciality standard | Queue any pending commerciality requests now. If the standard arrives on time, requests in the pipeline benefit first. |
November 13, CAS exemption as the default | Model your business-system exposure both ways. The CAS Board already raised basic coverage to $35M on October 1, and the direction of travel is one way. |
The department set its own reform deadlines and let the first one pass without comment. Watch closely for the next two, especially the October 29 commerciality standard, which directly affects your bottom line.
🤝THIS SPOT IS OPEN
Sponsor Tip of the Spear
We feature one sponsor per issue, right here after the lead analysis. Your company gets a short recommendation in our voice, with your name in bold and one clickable link. You send us a draft, and we’ll adapt it to fit the newsletter’s style, with your approval before it goes out. We only feature companies our readers would actually use, and if you sell to this market, that likely includes you.
Placements start at $299, with discounts for six or twelve issues. Book your spot today.
💰MONEY MOVES
Raytheon received an $8 billion ceiling cost-plus-fixed-fee IDIQ contract on October 13 for Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center strategic communications terminals. The contract covers modernization, production restart services, and technical studies, with work running through October 2036. This was a sole-source award, with only $800,000 obligated so far. Awarding such a large cost-plus contract just three months into the fixed-price era stands out, and the R&D exception in FAR 16.104 is key here. The justification for this award would be interesting to read.
Johns Hopkins APL received a $499.8 million ceiling sole-source IDIQ from DARPA on October 14, under its university-affiliated research center arrangement. The contract includes cost-plus-fixed-fee task orders through October 2031, with no funds obligated at signing. The UARC pipeline operates outside the usual competition statistics, and half a billion dollars just moved through it.
Raytheon also secured a multi-year SM-3 Block IB production and sustainment contract worth up to $6.3 billion, announced on October 8. The contract has a five-year base and two option years. That means Raytheon has $14.3 billion in contract ceilings in just one week, split between missile defense and nuclear command and control.
Alvarez & Marsal Federal is featured in ProPublica reporting, also published by Government Executive, about roughly $348.6 million in awards. This includes a $281 million no-bid other transaction signed in June for work connected to offices where a senior official has close ties to the firm. The Pentagon says all rules were followed, and the reporting covers allegations, not findings. This comes the same week the department owes industry a consortium fee-transparency policy.
📡OPPORTUNITY RADAR
There are four days left. The FAR overhaul comment window closes Monday, October 19, at 11:59 PM EDT. All four proposed rules from September close at the same time, and the one most readers have not reviewed is the most far-reaching. FAR Case 2026-011 would remove the FAR's data-rights subpart and replace it with DFARS-based rules, bringing government-purpose rights, assertion tables, and marking requirements to every civilian agency you work with. The rule’s own impact analysis is clear: the government would get unlimited rights in eleven categories of data, up from four today.
If you plan to comment, focus on the expansion of unlimited rights and how it affects your commercial product line, the need to price data deliverables as separate line items, and the single, non-extendable 20-year protection period for SBIR and STTR data, which changes the strategy for every Phase III. As of this morning, we found no major association letters filed, so individual comments will carry more weight.
Also open: FAR Case 2026-006 is the formal rulemaking for the fixed-price default, with the same Monday deadline. If the justification process has already affected your contracts, this is your chance to provide feedback.
Keep an eye on these deadlines: the Feinberg 45-day deliverables are due October 29, the same week as the Project Agincourt plan of action. The original CMMC Phase 2 date passes on November 10, and the task force report is still unpublished as of this morning. The continuing resolution expires December 11, and the statutory printed-circuit-board ban takes effect January 1, with only an advance notice so far.
🧭PEOPLE & POSTURE
At AUSA on Tuesday, Hegseth gave a figure for the drone initiative that raised eyebrows. Speaking on the Project Agincourt panel moderated by DRPM-UxS chief Owen West, he said, according to Defense Daily, "There's about $50 billion in autonomous and robotic systems in the reconciliation bill that would go into (Defense Autonomous Warfare Group), into Project Agincourt and into AutoWarCom." The reconciliation bill he referred to is currently stalled, but he wants it passed regardless of the midterm elections. The difference between that statement and the actual funding Congress has approved will be covered in tomorrow's Pro report.
On Monday, the Army changed the name of its Futures and Concepts Command to the Futures and Autonomous Systems Command (FASCOM). Its commander is now the Army's first Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Autonomy, with a goal to field priority autonomous systems by FY2028. Fort Rucker has been named the UAS autonomy center of excellence. A new PAE opens new opportunities, and it’s worth understanding the structure before reporting lines are finalized.
At AUSA, Hegseth also asked industry a direct question: which rules can be waived? The Feinberg deadlines mentioned above show how quickly the department can respond to that question when it chooses to.
📊READER PULSE
We asked how the CMMC pause affected your cybersecurity spending and promised to share Redspin’s industry numbers alongside yours.
Their October survey found about three-quarters of companies keeping spending steady and about one in five pausing certification-specific spending. Whereas from our results we were matched 50/50 on increasing spend and pausing spend.
How long did your last commerciality determination take?
The memo above promises a 15-business-day standard by October 29. Your responses will set the baseline we use to measure that promise.
🔮PREDICTIONS
Current record: 2-1, with three predictions still open. Tuesday’s prediction is that the CMMC task force report will not be made public before November 10, and nothing published since has changed that. The NDAA conference call is expected to run until Thanksgiving, with the Senate out until the week of November 9 and about eight session days before the holiday.
Tomorrow’s Pro report will add new predictions about what the Agincourt plan of action will say when it is released around October 30. Each prediction will have clear criteria and will be graded publicly when the plan is published.
⭐TIP OF THE SPEAR PRO
The October report will be released tomorrow morning.
'Agincourt: The Drone Office, the Money, and the Command That Eats It' went to press this week, and recent news has supported its main points.
Hegseth’s $50 billion is a reconciliation request without a clear path, while committees have only allocated $1 billion to the drone portfolio. The report breaks down the gap between these numbers, program by program. It also profiles West, Strasiser, and Evangelista, and covers the October 2027 Autonomous Warfare Command target, along with the new FASCOM structure the Army announced Monday. Predictions about the Agincourt plan are included, two weeks before the Pentagon releases the plan.
Pro members will receive the report in their inbox tomorrow and can also find it in the hub library with the rest of the series.
THE LAST WORD
The memo promised a 15-business-day standard for commerciality determinations by the end of this month. Let us know your real experience. How long did your last determination take, and what did the wait cost you in bids you couldn’t price commercially?
Reply to this email. Your answers will be the benchmark we use for October 29.
Semper Fi,
Justin
