No-Bid Defense Contracts Common More than 40 percent of the Pentagon's \$900 billion in prime contracts during the past six years have been awarded without competitive bidding, according to a Center for Public Integrity study released Wednesday. &lt;BR&gt;\&lt;FONT face="verdana,MS Sans Serif,arial,helvetica" size="-2"\ color="#666666"&gt;&lt;B&gt;-The Washington Post&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/FONT&gt;