(a) Unusual Cost Overruns.—(1) Appropriations available to the Department of Defense for a fiscal year may be used for payment of unusual cost overruns incident to ship overhaul, maintenance, and repair for a vessel inducted into an industrial-fund activity or contracted for during a prior fiscal year.

Terms Used In 10 USC 8683

  • Appropriation: The provision of funds, through an annual appropriations act or a permanent law, for federal agencies to make payments out of the Treasury for specified purposes. The formal federal spending process consists of two sequential steps: authorization
  • Contract: A legal written agreement that becomes binding when signed.
  • Fiscal year: The fiscal year is the accounting period for the government. For the federal government, this begins on October 1 and ends on September 30. The fiscal year is designated by the calendar year in which it ends; for example, fiscal year 2006 begins on October 1, 2005 and ends on September 30, 2006.
  • Obligation: An order placed, contract awarded, service received, or similar transaction during a given period that will require payments during the same or a future period.
  • vessel: includes every description of watercraft or other artificial contrivance used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on water. See 1 USC 3

(2) The Secretary of Defense shall notify Congress promptly before an obligation is incurred for any payment under paragraph (1).

(b) Changes in Scope of Work.—An appropriation available to the Department of Defense for a fiscal year may be used after the otherwise-applicable expiration of the availability for obligation of that appropriation—

(1) for payments to an industrial-fund activity for amounts required because of changes in the scope of work for ship overhaul, maintenance, and repair, in the case of work inducted into the industrial-fund activity during the fiscal year; and

(2) for payments under a contract for amounts required because of changes in the scope of work, in the case of a contract entered into during the fiscal year for ship overhaul, maintenance, and repair.


(c) Treatment of Amounts Appropriated After End of Period of Obligation.—In the application of section 1553(c) of title 31 to funds appropriated in the Operation and Maintenance, Navy account that are available for ship overhaul, the Secretary of the Navy may treat the limitation specified in paragraph (1) of such section to be “$10,000,000” rather than “$4,000,000”.