Defense contract awards,
and where each is recorded.
A single Department of War (DoW) contract can appear in three public places, at different times and in different detail. Knowing which source says what, and when, is the difference between a fair read of the market and a misleading one.
Updated
Three sources
One award, three records.
| War.gov | USAspending.gov | SAM.gov | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it lists | Daily contract announcements: one paragraph per award or modification. | Prime contract awards reported through the Federal Procurement Data System, with every modification. | Award notices that contracting officers post, often beside the solicitation they close. |
| From what size | $7.5 million and up. | Each reported award; Armathes imports $500,000 and up, and R&D from $50,000. | Many awards over $25,000, with exceptions. |
| How soon | Each business day, in the evening. | About 90 days after an award, for the Department of War. | When the contracting officer posts it. |
| What it tells you | Company, place, amount, work, expected completion, and contracting office, in prose. | Structured fields: obligations, dates, codes, recipient, competition, set-aside, and more. | Awardee and amount, tied to the notice number of the solicitation. |
| In Armathes | Imported weekday evenings. | Imported daily; each import rescans the last four months. | Checked every two hours through the business day. |
An award's record
What each field tells you.
- Reported obligations
- Money committed to the contract so far. The figure Armathes totals.
- Ceiling
- What the contract could reach with every option: base and all options. Shown beside obligations, never added to them.
- Date signed
- The day the award was signed, which is how Armathes dates it. Start and end dates stay as the performance period.
- End with all options
- When performance would end if every option were exercised, beside the current end date.
- Competition
- Whether the award was competed, how many offers it received, and the reason when it was not fully competed.
- Set-aside
- The small business program the award was reserved for, if any.
- Pricing
- How it is priced, such as firm fixed price or cost plus a fee.
- Solicitation
- The solicitation number, which ties the award to its SAM.gov notice.
- Industry and product
- The NAICS code and the Product and Service Code: who does the work, and what was bought.
- Parent company
- The recipient's parent, where the record names one.
- Place of performance
- The state or country where the work is done.
- Program and funding
- The DoW program, and the agency funding the work, which can differ from the office that awarded it.
- Subcontracts
- Subawards the prime contractor reported, and their value.
A field the record lacks is left out, never filled in. Every award’s page shows these as its source last reported them, with the full history of each change.
Reading the totals
Four ways award totals mislead.
An obligation is not spending in a period. An award counts once, on the day it was signed, not spread across its term.
A ceiling is a limit, not a total. Adding ceilings to obligations counts money that may never be committed.
Modifications change an award after the fact. Armathes keeps every version it sees, so a raised amount shows both values.
Recent months fill in late, because the Department of War publishes awards about 90 days after they are made.
In Armathes
Every award, searchable and connected.
Search awards by award, company, or agency; filter by market, agency, period, and size; and see obligations and award counts over time, with the largest, average, and median award. Each company has a profile of its awards, markets, and buyers, and up to four compare side by side. Flows trace the money from each agency, through the market, to the companies that receive it.
Records and tables export to CSV, Excel, and PDF. To size a market from these awards, see defense market analysis; to see which contracts are ending, recompete tracking.
In the platformAwardsCompetitorsCompareFlows
Questions
Asked often
- Where can I find Department of War contract awards?
- Three public places: War.gov announces contracts of $7.5 million and up each business day; USAspending.gov publishes prime contract awards reported through the Federal Procurement Data System; and SAM.gov carries award notices that contracting officers post.
- Why doesn't a recent award appear on USAspending.gov?
- The Department of War publishes its contract awards about 90 days after they are made. Large awards often appear sooner in War.gov's daily announcements.
- What is the difference between obligations and a contract's value?
- Obligations are money committed so far. A contract's ceiling, the base and all options, is the most it could reach. Armathes totals obligations and shows ceilings beside them, never added in.
- Are subcontracts included in award totals?
- No. Totals count prime awards, from an agency directly to a company. An award's page shows the subawards its prime contractor reported.
- Which awards does Armathes hold?
- Department of War contract awards of $500,000 or more since the start of fiscal 2026, and research and development awards from $50,000, with War.gov's daily announcements. Insights shows a fixed example from fiscal 2023.