EconDefense
ACQ-46 / Acquisition, transition and contract finance

Purchase metered consumption-based capabilities with flexible lifecycle funding

Buy a combined software/hardware/data/labor capability as a service billed by actual usage at fixed-price units; use authorized incremental funding and advance payments.

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At a glance

Possible toolACQ-46 · Contracts & purchases
Legal basis10 U.S.C. §3605

Authority holder: Secretary of Defense and military-department Secretaries

Contracts & purchases

Mechanism tags describe the source text; they do not expand the authority.

Availability and verification

Express statutory pathway; award-specific appropriations, available balances, delegations, implementation and approvals not independently verified.

Requirements and limits

Eligibility & prerequisites

  • Metered actual usage and predetermined fixed unit prices; 75%/90% funding-consumption notifications.
  • Implementing acquisition provisions and appropriate service model.

Limits & exclusions

  • Feature/capability additions up to 25% of original contract value receive specified competitive treatment; not unlimited out-of-scope growth.
  • Do not read lifecycle-purpose provision as permission to move any existing appropriation without fiscal analysis.

Funding conditions

  • Amounts authorized for this acquisition authority may cover RDT&E, procurement, production, modification and O&M; incremental contracts/agreements and advances expressly permitted.

Read the funding and execution guide

Who contributes what

Need & planning

  • Operational requirement owner; Service/component portfolio acquisition executive and program manager

Resources

  • Sponsoring Service/component appropriations manager and comptroller

Approval

  • Service/component acquisition executive and authorized contracting authority, at applicable threshold

Execution

Partners & review

  • User command
  • Counsel, fiscal, engineering, testing, logistics and security staff as applicable

Office links are editorial matches to the original role text, not verified delegations. Composite labels and unmatched actors are preserved.

Coordination pathway

Capability owner → contracting/fiscal team designs unit pricing and funding controls → authorized award → metered monitoring and budget replenishment.

Actor and execution-role sources

Legal basis

What this research establishes

Legal powerSource and conditions recorded
EligibilityProject-specific check needed
Available fundsBalances not verified
DelegationValid signature authority must be checked
ExecutionOffice capacity and approvals must be checked

Confidence: High on express authority and cited conditions; execution assignment is illustrative unless statute expressly names it.

Currentness: New 10 U.S.C. §3605 read directly in P.L. 119-60 §1825; OLRC indexed text dated 2026-08-02. Implementation and FY2027 balances unverified.

Research target: October 2, 2026. A record-specific last-review date is not supplied. Publication date is not legal-currentness certification.

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