EconDefense
USC-17 / Acquisition, transition and contract finance

Use simplified purchasing and micro-purchases, with special emergency flexibility

Use the statutory simplified-acquisition and micro-purchase procedures, including purchases without competitive quotations at the applicable micro-purchase level when price is reasonable, and use enhanced emergency thresholds or narrow commercial-treatment authority after the required determination.

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Authority / instrument · USC-17

Simplified and emergency purchasing

Acquisition, transition and contract finance

Statute & instrument
Authority holder

Head of the procuring agency and authorized contracting or purchasing officials

What this does not authorize / hard limit

This is not a general suspension of competition or fiscal law, and emergency thresholds are not available merely because a purchase is urgent.

Recorded executor

Authorized component contracting, agreements, or personnel office; assignment is illustrative

Continue to actor →

Recorded executing role; this record-specific route is not an additional institutional office.

Legal basisSources linkedLegal sources and instrument limits are recorded.
RequirementsGates recordedRead the requirements for this instrument; applicability depends on the proposed action.
Public fundingRules recordedAvailable acquisition appropriations; the procedure itself creates no funding. Office budget figures are separate institutional context, not an allocation to this instrument.
Assigned rolesRoles recordedPublic sources describe institutional authority. The instrument identifies approval and execution roles; a specific signature remains transaction-dependent.
EngagementProgram unverifiedAdded in the October 5 statutory review; no current implementing program, intake or individual delegation verified.

Public evidence describes the institution and instrument; it is not approval of an individual transaction.

At a glance

Possible toolUSC-17 · Contracts & purchases
Legal basis10 U.S.C. §3205

Authority holder: Head of the procuring agency and authorized contracting or purchasing officials

Contracts & purchases

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

Availability and verification

Express statutory pathway identified in the USC scrub. Current implementation, public intake, appropriations, available balances, and transaction-specific delegations were not independently verified.

Requirements and limits

Eligibility & prerequisites

  • Use the applicable current threshold, including authorized inflation adjustments and FAR implementation; nominal dollar amounts in older Code editions are not necessarily the operating threshold.
  • Do not split a larger requirement to evade limits; promote competition to the maximum extent practicable and distribute micro-purchases equitably among qualified suppliers.
  • Section 1903 requires the head-of-agency determination for one of the enumerated contingency, attack-response, international-disaster, or emergency purposes.
  • The §1903(c) commercial-treatment power applies only to the specified attack-defense/recovery category and retains the stated sole-source cost-rule exceptions.

Limits & exclusions

  • This is not a general suspension of competition or fiscal law, and emergency thresholds are not available merely because a purchase is urgent.

Funding conditions

  • Available acquisition appropriations; the procedure itself creates no funding.

Read the funding and execution guide

Who contributes what

Need & planning

  • Relevant DoD mission or program sponsor

Resources

  • Sponsoring component budget owner and comptroller; available funding not verified

Approval

  • Head of the procuring agency and authorized contracting or purchasing officials; transaction-specific delegation must be confirmed

Execution

  • Authorized component contracting, agreements, or personnel office; assignment is illustrative

Partners & review

  • Program counsel, fiscal officials, and eligible external counterpart as applicable

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

Coordination pathway

Mission sponsor → relevant program or personnel lead → counsel and fiscal review → official holding the required authority → eligible counterpart. Named functions are routing guidance, not verified individual delegations.

Actor and execution-role sources

October 5 statutory review

Added in the October 5 statutory coverage review. The cited legal mechanism and its conditions were examined; a current implementing program, intake, funding balance and individual delegation were not verified.

Section coverage and review findings

Legal basis

  • 10 U.S.C. §3205Official GovInfo 2024 baseline; read alongside the enacted amendments identified in this record.
  • 10 U.S.C. §3571Official GovInfo 2024 baseline; read alongside the enacted amendments identified in this record.
  • 10 U.S.C. §3572Official GovInfo 2024 baseline; read alongside the enacted amendments identified in this record.
  • 10 U.S.C. §3573Official GovInfo 2024 baseline; read alongside the enacted amendments identified in this record.
  • 41 U.S.C. §1901Official GovInfo 2024 baseline; read alongside the enacted amendments identified in this record.
  • 41 U.S.C. §1902Official GovInfo 2024 baseline; read alongside the enacted amendments identified in this record.
  • 41 U.S.C. §1903Official GovInfo 2024 baseline; read alongside the enacted amendments identified in this record.
  • 41 U.S.C. §1908Official GovInfo 2024 baseline; read alongside the enacted amendments identified in this record.

What this research establishes

Legal basisSources linkedLegal sources and instrument limits are recorded.
RequirementsGates recordedRead the requirements for this instrument; applicability depends on the proposed action.
Public fundingRules recordedAvailable acquisition appropriations; the procedure itself creates no funding. Office budget figures are separate institutional context, not an allocation to this instrument.
Assigned rolesRoles recordedPublic sources describe institutional authority. The instrument identifies approval and execution roles; a specific signature remains transaction-dependent.
EngagementProgram unverifiedAdded in the October 5 statutory review; no current implementing program, intake or individual delegation verified.

Confidence: High on the cited statutory text and express conditions; operational availability is unverified.

Currentness: Reviewed 2026-10-05 against official GovInfo 2024 Code text and a targeted P.L. 119-60 enacted-amendment search. OLRC direct pages were intermittently under maintenance. This is not an exhaustive certification of legislation after that baseline, funding, implementation, or individual delegation.

Review scope: Record reviewed 2026-10-05. Publication is not legal-currentness certification.

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