Contractors Almanac

In a move that sent shockwaves through contracting shops and caused at least three procurement lawyers to faint into their redlined PDFs, the White House has announced a sweeping overhaul of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). The stated goal? “To remove outdated, duplicative, and unnecessarily burdensome regulations”—which, depending on your perspective, is either a long-overdue spring cleaning or a harbinger of 1,000 ambiguous mod clauses. For those of us in capture management, this is either great news or the beginning of a very long compliance migraine. Imagine telling your BD lead that the 1,986-page rulebook we’ve all been quoting like scripture is now getting redlined like a first-year proposal writer’s draft. Suddenly, all those years of memorizing FAR 15.305 like bedtime poetry might not buy you the same bragging rights. But here’s the kicker: this isn’t just a bureaucratic haircut. This is a full-on style change. The executive order mandates the removal of any FAR provi...

By someone who remembers when a DoD RFP had the word “simplified” in it, unironically. All opinions are my own. It started, as most federal shakeups do, with a signature, a pen, and a podium flanked by too many flags. On April 9, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed   Executive Order 14192 : “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base.” If that sounds like a lot of words to say “DoD, go faster,” you’re not wrong. But in true Trumpian fashion, it wasn’t just a policy. It was a statement. A dare. A late-stage sequel to acquisition reform efforts going back to Goldwater-Nichols, with less red tape and more red meat. “Cancel it. Fix it. Or move it to the private sector.” At the heart of EO 14192 is a not-so-gentle command: The Pentagon is to  review every Major Defense Acquisition Program (MDAP) —you know, the big ones, the billion-dollar behemoths that fund entire congressional districts—and determine if they’re behind schedule or ov...