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Law360 (December 23, 2020, 5:52 PM EST) -- Throughout 2020, the Trump administration injected more than $12 billion into the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, reaffirmed the U.S. Department of Defense's $10 billion IT partnership with Microsoft and made progress on President Donald Trump's promised border wall.
Here are Law360's top five picks for the biggest government contracts of 2020:
$12.3B Race For COVID-19 Vaccine
The Trump administration's $12.3 billion effort to produce a COVID-19 vaccine — known as Operation Warp Speed, in a nod to the science fiction series "Star Trek" — has culminated in placing orders for hundreds of millions of doses of recently approved vaccines.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has so far greenlit the emergency use of Pfizer Inc.'s and Moderna's mRNA vaccines. Federal and state governments are currently distributing 100 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine to frontline workers and nursing home inhabitants, and the Defense Department ordered another 100 million batches of Pfizer's drug on Wednesday.
AstraZeneca PLC, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax Inc., Sanofi SA and GlaxoSmithKline PLC also are conducting late-stage clinical trials of their vaccine candidates. The government's standing orders for those pending vaccines amounts to 600 million doses, according to Operation Warp Speed statistics on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website.
The Trump administration has also provided a total of $1.3 billion for COVID-19 antibody cocktails separately developed by Regeneron, Eli Lilly and Co. and AstraZeneca.
Microsoft Beats Amazon for $10B JEDI Deal, Again
In September, the DOD doubled down on its decision to award Microsoft with the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract to transfer legacy IT systems to the cloud.
The reconsidered award was a key victory for Microsoft, which spent months fending off Amazon's claims that Trump's "public beef" with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos tainted the bidding process.
But the DOD's decision kicked off another episode in the JEDI saga, with Amazon filing a second lawsuit in October saying the decision exacerbates "prior errors to validate a flawed and politically corrupted decision."
Trump Builds Border Wall Amid Fierce Opposition
Throughout 2020, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded construction contracts to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to Southwest Valley Constructors and Fisher Sand and Gravel Co.
Fisher Sand's $1.3 billion contract is the largest border wall deal to date, but it was issued right after House Democrats raised concerns that Trump unduly influenced the company's previous $400 million border wall deal.
Amid the deal-making, the Trump administration was also fending off litigation from environmental and Indigenous groups seeking to shut down construction activities. Several challengers also took a jab at the national emergency Trump declared to divert $8 billion in appropriated defense funding to border wall construction.
The Supreme Court has allowed construction to continue as it reviews the litigation.
The border wall has even led to tangential legal disputes. In August, prosecutors arrested former Trump campaign adviser Steve Bannon on charges that he misappropriated the funds collected through a $25 million GoFundMe page.
President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to stop border wall construction.
Air Force Pays $23B for Questionable Boeing Fighter Jets
U.S. Air Force officers announced in July that the service had cut a $22.9 billion deal for 144 of Boeing Co.'s F-15 fighter jets, praising the aircraft as affordable and ready to fight.
The announcement ignored earlier public criticisms from former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and defense analysts who said that the F-15X was ineffective against modern air defense systems used by Russia and China.
The jet also played a role in an ethics probe into former acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who was previously a Boeing executive. Following reports that Shanahan had "prodded" the DOD to include the F-15 in its annual budget request, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington petitioned the DOD Inspector General to investigate Shanahan.
The OIG eventually cleared Shanahan, finding that he only made broad comments concerning the F-15 and hadn't pressured the service into purchasing the aircraft.
Northrop Inks $13.3B Deal To Update Nuclear Stockpile
In September, Northrop Grumman secured a $13.3 billion deal to update the nation's aging nuclear stockpile.
The deal will have the defense contractor providing engineering and development services for the Air Force's Ground Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missile program, the successor to the aging LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBM.
Though billions of dollars of work were up for grabs, Northrop was the sole bidder on the deal. Boeing Co. had signaled its interest in the award in July 2019, but dropped out of the race after Northrop acquired Orbital ATK.
Orbital, now known as Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, is one of two U.S. producers of solid rocket engines, and Boeing had planned on using Orbital's engines in its proposed ICBM. By acquiring the business, Northrop had put Boeing at a technical disadvantage, Boeing said in a letter to the Air Force.
The DOD's Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation estimates that it will cost $85 billion to develop the next-generation ICBM.
---Additional reporting by Daniel Wilson. Editing by Nicole Bleier.
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