Government Contracts Intelligence Briefing

On September 1, 2026, the Office of Management and Budget’s Cost Accounting Standards Board (the Board) published two final rules in the Federal Register that together represent the most significant deregulation of the Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) program in years. Both rules are effective October 1, 2026. Government contractors, particularly those near current CAS thresholds, those managing indefinite delivery contracts (IDCs), and those relying on standard costing, should assess the impact now.

In the span of five days in late August 2026, the federal government moved on four fronts to accelerate US space transportation capacity: a new presidential policy directive, a novel “mission authorization” pilot program, a formal request for information on siting new spaceports and creating priority launch airspace, and an Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proceeding aimed at freeing up spectrum for launch operations. Taken together, these actions signal a coordinated, whole-of-government push and a wave of new contracting, licensing, and compliance activity that government contractors, from launch providers to infrastructure builders to spectrum users, should be tracking closely.

On August 24, 2026, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the launch of the National Fraud Detection Center (NFDC), a new prosecutor-led, multi-agency unit tasked with investigating the actors it describes as doing the most harm to federal programs, including fraud schemes that reach across multiple programs and jurisdictions. For anyone doing business with the federal government or receiving funding from the federal government (including contractors and grant recipients), this is a development worth understanding in detail.

A memo signed this week by Deputy Secretary of War/Defense Stephen Feinberg signals one of the more potentially consequential shifts in defense pricing policy in years. The directive, addressed to senior Pentagon leadership and the directors of the military services and defense agencies, calls for a “reset” of the Department’s expectations around contractor cost and pricing data and floats a tool that would let the Pentagon reach directly into contractors’ financial systems to get it. This, coupled with the broader push to fixed-price contracts, would push contractors to take all of the financial risk in contracts without a potential upside.

On August 20, 2026, the US Small Business Administration published two linked proposed rules in the Federal Register that, together, represent the most consequential change to small business size standards since SBA began its five-year rolling reviews under the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010.

On July 13, 2026, the Department of War (DoW) announced the immediate suspension of Phase II of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program — the phase that was to require formal third-party (C3PAO) certification of Level 2 compliance beginning November 10, 2026. DoW Chief Information Officer Kirsten A. Davies described the move as consistent with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's Acquisition Transformation System, which prioritizes speed to capability and lower barriers to entry for small, medium, and non-traditional defense contractors. DoW is launching a 60-day CMMC Reform Task Force to recommend a scaled-back, more efficient path forward, informed by industry feedback already gathered through a public Request for Information.

As we noted last week, the FAR Council released proposed rules remaking 19 separate FAR parts. Included in the first tranche of proposed rules under the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO), the Federal Acquisition Regulatory (FAR) Council has released a significantly revised proposed rule governing the protection of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) by civilian contractors. Published on June 23, 2026, at 91 FR 37550, this version updates and supersedes the standalone proposed rule that the FAR Council issued in January 2025 (90 FR 4278, FAR Case 2017-016). The comment deadline for the new proposed rule is July 23, 2026.

The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council (FAR Council) issued proposed updates to large portions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation as part of its comprehensive, self-titled “Revolutionary” FAR Overhaul Initiative.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has proposed wide-ranging changes to the regulatory requirements (currently known as the “Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance”) underlying billions of dollars in grant awards annually. The proposed revisions make (and rebrand) the guidance as binding, contain new anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) mandates, give the federal government broader powers to terminate grant awards, and prohibit fixed-price awards, among other things.

Since established by Congress in 1978, the Department of Energy has had a program for loans to minority business enterprises. As stated in the regulations implementing the Department of Energy Implementing Act (the “Act”), the purpose of the loans are to “assist such enterprises in participating fully in research, development, demonstration and contract activities of the Department of Energy.”