U.S. Army turns to contractors after depots lose 18% of their workforce

The U.S. Army has awarded Amentum Services a $609 million contract to supply at least 500 full-time-equivalent contract workers to keep its depots running, the U.S. Department of War announced on Nov. 5. The firm-fixed-price contract, W911RQ-27-C-A004, lists Texarkana, Texas, home of Red River Army Depot, as the place of performance and runs through Nov. 12, 2031.

The announcement describes the work as a supplemental workforce to sustain organic industrial base operations across key depots, without naming them, and says the Army received only one bid. Army Contracting Command at Detroit Arsenal, Michigan, obligated $121.9 million in fiscal 2027 funds at award. The Army did not say which jobs the contract workers will fill or how they will be split among depots.

Red River Army Depot sits on about 15,375 acres (6,222 hectares) west of Texarkana and is the Army’s center of industrial and technical excellence for tactical wheeled vehicles, including the Humvee. The depot also helps overhaul M270 rocket launchers to the M270A2 standard with Lockheed Martin. More recently, it has begun producing batteries for small drones under Army Materiel Command’s push to build drone components in its own facilities. Amentum already has people there: in July 2026, the company was advertising automotive worker jobs on a contract performed at the depot.

The award follows a sharp loss of government workers at the Army’s two main ground vehicle depots. The Government Accountability Office reported in August 2026 that the permanent and term-limited workforce at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama and Red River fell by a combined 785 people, about 18%, between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2025. Red River lost 169 people, about 11% of that workforce, while its contract workforce grew from 589 to 673. Anniston lost 616 people, about 22%, and its contractor headcount more than doubled, from 101 to 258.

Most of the recent losses came from the deferred resignation program, known as the “fork in the road” offer, and from the federal hiring freeze imposed in January 2025, the GAO found. Depot officials told the auditors the freeze kept them from replacing skilled maintainers who retired or left, and that experienced tradespeople such as electricians are hard to recruit and keep even without a freeze. They also said contract workers often arrive without the skills the job requires, and that contractor turnover can disrupt production. The Army lifted its civilian hiring freeze in late September 2026, nearly 20 months after it began.

Workload at Red River has moved in the opposite direction. The GAO found that the depot’s work generally increased between fiscal 2021 and 2025, especially for Army customers, while Anniston’s workload declined slightly. Work on Humvees made up a large part of Red River’s load.

The new contract appears to grow out of an effort the Red River contracting office started earlier this year. In February 2026, it opened an area of interest titled Solutions for Supplemental Labor Management under its organic industrial base modernization commercial solutions opening, seeking a single way to source and manage contract labor across multiple Army industrial sites. The contract number carries the same office prefix, but the Army has not said whether the award came from that solicitation.

The contract fits the Army’s 15-year plan to modernize its organic industrial base of 23 depots, arsenals and ammunition plants. That plan has focused largely on buildings, machinery and automation. Red River’s own planning documents list workforce development as a separate priority.

The value works out to roughly $244,000 per full-time-equivalent position per year over five years if the workforce stays at 500, though that figure includes Amentum’s overhead and profit as well as wages. The announcement does not say how many workers, or which depots beyond Red River, the contract will cover once it is fully staffed.