Department of War Contract Awards: How to Track the $354B DoD Recompete Wall

By the time a Department of War solicitation posts to SAM.gov, the capture race is usually over. The teams that win started tracking the incumbent’s period-of-performance clock 12 to 18 months out. This is where that clock stands today.

“Department of War” and “Department of Defense” are the same buyer

If you searched “department of war contract awards,” you are looking for the same organization that USASpending, FPDS, and SAM.gov still record under Department of Defense (DoD). The “Department of War” styling has re-entered common usage, but the contracting data, agency codes, and award records have not been renamed — DoD, the military departments (Army, Navy, Air Force), and the defense agencies (DLA, DISA, MDA, DTRA, DHA) are exactly where the awards live. When you track “Department of War” awards, you are tracking the DoD contracting enterprise. This report uses the two terms interchangeably and pulls from the DoD award and recompete records.

The FY2026 budget backdrop

SCOUT’s agency briefing reads the Congressional Budget Justification directly. For FY2026, DoD accounts show $332.2 billion requested against $625.2 billion enactedacross the accounts SCOUT tracks — with 366 accounts increasing year-over-year and 706 decreasing. That split is the real signal: aggregate defense spending remains enormous, but the money is moving between programs, not uniformly up. The accounts that are growing tell you where funded new requirements are forming; the ones shrinking tell you where recompetes will be re-scoped or consolidated.

On the risk side, DoD is a comparatively low-protest environment for its size: SCOUT’s protest intelligence shows a 11.1% merit sustain rate across 748 protests on record. For a challenger, that means the bar to overturn an award on protest is high — the leverage is in winning the evaluation, not litigating it afterward.

The $353.55B recompete wall inside 18 months

This is the core of the report. SCOUT’s recompete engine scores every DoD contract by period-of-performance end date. Inside an 18-month window, 213 DoD contracts worth an estimated $353.55 billion reach a current PoP end — the point at which a recompete, bridge, or option decision has to be made. Every one of those 213 contracts sits in the $100M-and-up band. The concentration is almost entirely DoD-led (202 contracts, $343.6B), with a thin GSA-vehicle tail (11 contracts, $9.96B) for the IT and professional-services work DoD buys through GSA.

The ten largest DoD recompetes SCOUT is tracking

Two patterns jump out. First, defense health dominates the near-term wall: the two TRICARE West managed-care contracts alone represent roughly $37.9B expiring the same week (Dec 31, 2026). That is the single most consequential services recompete in the entire DoD pipeline, and it is a professional-services and health-administration play, not a weapons-platform play. Second, the platform-sustainment tail (KC-46, F-35, F-15, E-2D, shipbuilding) is where the largest dollars sit, but those are effectively incumbent-locked to the original manufacturers — the realistic entry point for challengers is the subcontract and services layer beneath them.

Where the near-term urgency is (next ~90 days)

Several nine- and ten-figure DoD contracts hit their current PoP end inside the next quarter — meaning the successor action is already in motion or imminent:

The services contracts on this list — Eglin O&M, J-TECH II range support, and LOGCAP — are the ones where a well-positioned mid-tier prime or a strong small-business team can realistically compete or win a subcontract seat. The GPS OCX and LHA-8 lines are here to show the timing signal, not the addressable market.

How to actually track Department of War awards

The mistake most teams make is watching SAM.gov for new postings. By the time a DoD RFP posts, the incumbent has had a year of shaping advantage and the government already knows what it wants. A durable tracking workflow works backward from the contract clock:

1. Start from period-of-performance end dates, not postings. Every recompete in the tables above was surfaced from its current PoP end — the earliest date a successor action must be in place. That date, minus 12–18 months, is when your capture effort should begin.
2. Attach the incumbent and obligation history to every line. Knowing that Health Net holds TRICARE West or that Vectrus holds LOGCAP FOC is the difference between a cold pursuit and a teaming or displacement strategy.
3. Separate platform locks from contestable services. KC-46 and F-35 sustainment are not open fields. Managed care, range services, base O&M, IT modernization, and logistics augmentation are. Filter the $353B wall down to the work your firm can actually win.
4. Watch the budget deltas. The 366 growing / 706 shrinking account split tells you which recompetes will be expanded and which will be consolidated or descoped before the solicitation drops.

That is exactly the workflow SCOUT automates: recompete scoring off PoP end dates, incumbent and award-history enrichment on every contract, and agency budget and protest context in one briefing — so a two-person BD shop can watch the Department of War pipeline the way a prime’s capture organization does.

Fair disclosure

This report is produced by PrimeRFP SCOUT using SCOUT’s live federal intelligence. We believe the data is accurate as of July 6, 2026, but we are not the primary source — USASpending.gov, GAO, and the Congressional Budget Justification are. Estimated values reflect the obligated or ceiling amount on the current contract; successor contract values may differ with scope, option, and budget changes. Recompete timelines are estimates based on period-of-performance end dates; actual solicitation schedules vary, and some contracts on the wall will be extended, bridged, or consolidated rather than openly recompeted.

Other platforms — including Bloomberg Government and GovWin (Deltek) — provide complementary forecasting and teaming data that SCOUT does not replicate. This report demonstrates SCOUT’s capability in recompete and agency intelligence, not a comprehensive view of every tool available to defense BD teams.

Methodology

Budget and protest figures come from SCOUT’s agency_briefing for the Department of Defense (FY2026), which aggregates the Congressional Budget Justification, agency budget trend data, and GAO protest records. The recompete wall comes from SCOUT’s recompete engine, filtered to agency = Department of Defense, an 18-month forward window, and a $500M minimum value for the ranked tables (the full pipeline uses a $100M floor). Urgency is measured from pop_end_current— the current period-of-performance end date — not the fully-optioned potential end date. All value figures are USASpending-sourced and reflect obligated or ceiling amounts on the current award.