How often does AwardTape refresh?

Every weekday: the tracker re-checks SAM.gov and DIU, and the contract data recompiles from USAspending. Each page shows its data date.

Obligations on orders (plus any obligation on the vehicle itself) divided by the ceiling listed on the award record, base and all options.

A company holding at least one award on a vehicle. Multiple-award vehicles show awards and companies separately, because one company can hold 2 awards on the same vehicle.

How do I report an error?

Email hello@awardtape.com with the page link. We check the figure against the record and fix the page on the next refresh.

AwardTape · Methodology

Methodology: sources, dates and definitions

Every figure on AwardTape comes from 3 public sources: USAspending (awards and orders), SAM.gov (open bids, through the public Get Opportunities API) and the DIU open solicitations page. DoD contract actions publish about 90 days after signing under DFARS PGI 204.6, so each row carries a DoD 90d or Civ label.

Sources

USAspending API v2: award records, child orders on each IDV, transactions on standalone awards, and signed dates from award search. 71 awards and 388 order rows in the Oct 9, 2026 compile.
SAM.gov Get Opportunities API: open solicitations, set-asides and response deadlines for the tracker and bid pages, public endpoints only.
DIU: the open solicitations page for Commercial Solutions Opening calls.
Department of War daily contract announcements: the war.gov contracts feed (awards of $9 million and up, each business day at about 5 PM ET), split into single awards on the DoD contracts pages. Same-day, about 90 days ahead of USAspending; the page text is read from the official release or its Internet Archive capture.
USAspending award data archive: every DoD and DHS prime contract, order and IDV transaction since October 1, 2023, loaded into the defense awards database and updated each weekday from USAspending bulk downloads of modified records. Categories map every Product and Service Code in the official PSC Manual (April 2025, Acquisition.gov) to a two-level defense category tree. Place of performance shows the state only; no street addresses.
DoD budget justification exhibits: the Comptroller's Exhibit P-1 (procurement) and Exhibit R-1 (RDT&E) spreadsheets for the FY2025, FY2026 and FY2027 President's Budget requests, parsed line by line into the budget pages (prior year, current year and request, with quantities where the exhibit lists them). Totals leave out memo (non-add) rows.
DoD reprogramming actions: prior-approval (DD 1415-1) and internal (DD 1415-3) reprogramming PDFs the Comptroller posts for FY2025 and FY2026, read with OCR where pages are scanned and checked against the totals printed on each form. Reprogramming actions link the source PDF and state the parse check.
FPDS public feed: other transaction agreements and modifications for the watched agreements. USAspending leaves OT agreements out; DoD actions post to FPDS about 90 days after signing.

Dates

Order rows show the signed date (the base obligation date on USAspending). Standalone awards list each funding action by action date. A row falls back to the period-of-performance start only when the record lacks a signed date, and says so.

DoD contract actions publish on USAspending about 90 days after signing (DFARS PGI 204.6), so the newest DoD orders appear on this page about 3 months after they are signed. Civilian agency awards publish on USAspending on the normal cadence, usually within days of signing.

Definitions

Ceiling: base and all options on the award record. Multiple-award vehicles often list one shared ceiling on every award; AwardTape counts it once.
Fill: obligated on orders (plus any obligation on the vehicle itself) / ceiling (base and all options).
Pace: orders signed in the last 365 days; annualized since start for vehicles 6 to 12 months old; none under 6 months; task orders use funding actions.
Headroom: remaining ceiling / monthly pace (estimate).
Seats and awards: seats = distinct companies holding an award on the vehicle (names normalized); awards counted separately.

Which vehicles are on the list

41 drone, unmanned and counter-drone vehicles and awards, picked for scope and size. On Oct 9, 2026 the list added the largest counter-drone awards with fiscal year 2026 activity, found by USAspending keyword search (counter-UAS, C-UAS, counter-small unmanned) and checked by hand for scope. The list covers a subset of federal spending; totals describe the tracked vehicles only.

Contract archive

The contract archive gives every award and order a permanent page at /awards/ plus the PIID. It holds every award and child order on the tracked vehicles, USAspending keyword matches for counter-drone work (fiscal year 2008 to today, each checked against its description), and the prime award history of the tracked drone and counter-drone companies. Records never leave the archive: one that drops out of the source keeps its page with a note. Search runs in the browser over a records index; year and month pages list every record without JavaScript.

Company names

Names appear as reported on USAspending. Variants of one company (for example Inc and LLC after a conversion) merge into one company page; separate legal entities stay separate, with no parent roll-up. Recipient names on awards signed before April 4, 2022 may come from D&B Open Data, reproduced as published on USAspending.gov; AwardTape shows names only, never addresses.

Corrections

Email hello@awardtape.com with the page link. Each page states its data date.