💰 Science summit drops $6B

Hello GovBrew Readers! I’m one week in, and have received so much incredible support already. Thank you for the kindness. You may have noticed slight variations in the type of newsletter content, and that’s by design. One of my initiatives is to highlight real people and their voices in GovCon. That means we’ll be including articles as per usual, but also informal LinkedIn posts to bring you directly to hot takes while you eat your hot cakes (okay…that was lame).

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The DOD and SBA signed a MOA to operationalize the Smaller War Plants Commission, aligning the Pentagon's Economic Defense Unit with SBA's Office of Investment and Innovation to direct strategic capital toward small defense businesses. Small manufacturers make up 70% of the US defense industrial base, yet many lack access to the capital needed to scale. Priority sectors include munitions, drones, microelectronics, shipbuilding components, and critical minerals.

The Army's acting secretary told AUSA the service needs to make "millions" of one-way attack drones, but most of the parts are made in China. To find and fix the breaking points, the Army is planning a 2027 Manufacturing Rodeo, a public competition to expose where the industrial base is failing and where new companies are solving problems.

CSIS analyzed DOD budget documents and industry announcements to map the munitions rebuild timeline. Policymakers and industry should now turn their efforts to not only rebuilding the munitions industrial base but also recasting it for the demands of modern high-intensity wars of precision and attrition.

HHS OIG. “The Nation’s Challenge to Combat Durable Medical Equipment Fraud in Medicare.” OEI-02-24-00311. August 2026. (Source)

The Army stood up Futures and Autonomous Systems Command, merging what was left of Army Futures Command and TRADOC after last year's consolidation. The key difference from the first attempt: FASCOM will be led by an acquisition executive, keeping decisions inside the command rather than kicking them up to the Pentagon.

ARCYBER's Task Force Lexington started with a handful of AI agent roles and has now mapped out an entire Cyber Protection Team of agents covering analytic support, network analysts, and more. Lt. Gen. Eubank said the agents operate inside the Army's network under human oversight with tight guardrails, treating each agent like a new human operator. Two Project Griffin awards are also dropping this week, narrowed from over 100 submissions to two undisclosed companies that will build an AI agent ecosystem to defend Army networks.

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It's time to couple up. You don't want to be left alone on the dance floor. A select group of mentor-protégé agreements were approved by the SBA over the past month across FedCiv, FedHealth, and DOD. Check out the 18 IT and consulting firms that have already been taken.

The White House dropped more than $6 billion in science commitments at its Golden Age of Science Summit, including $2.4 billion from 11 industry partners for the Genesis Mission Consortium. NVIDIA led with $1 billion, followed by AMD at $500 million and OpenAI at $200 million. Other highlights include a $215 million quantum computing competition a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars planned for 2028, and a $100 million doctoral fellowship program.

DOE, NIH, and Biohub signed an MOU to build an open biological data foundation for predictive models of how cells respond to interventions. DOE and Biohub are each investing $500 million over five years. DOE brings supercomputing, user facilities, autonomous labs, and data systems. Biohub brings its Virtual Biology Initiative and SI technologies. NIH brings health data and its research enterprise.

Antenna Research Associates and Empower RF Systems merged to pair ARA's antenna and aperture expertise with Empower RF's high-power solid-state amplifiers covering HF through X-band. The combined company, backed by OceanSound Partners, targets counter-UAS, electronic warfare, SATCOM ground infrastructure, and radar missions where power and aperture cannot be engineered separately.

GCubed Enterprises, a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business with more than 12 years of federal IT and cybersecurity service, acquired RightDirection Technology Solutions, which will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary. RDTS's prime contracts, past performance, cleared talent, and agency relationships stay intact through the transition.

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