From the Congressional Research Service Sept. 27, 2013 Virginia (SSN-774) Class Attack Submarine Procurement report: The Navy is proposing to defer to FY2015 the remaining $952.7 million of the procurement cost of the second boat requested for FY2014. This would divide the procurement funding for the boat between two fiscal years (FY2014 and FY2015)—a funding profile sometimes called split funding.
In recent instances where split funding has been used to fund Navy ships, the funding has been appropriated using a funding method called incremental funding, under which Congress takes a positive action to approve each of the two annual funding increments. For the second Virginia-class boat requested for FY2014, however, the Navy is proposing to use a different funding method called advance appropriations, which is a form of full funding that resembles a legislatively locked in form of incremental funding. Under advance appropriations (which is not to be confused with advance procurement [AP] funding), the FY2015 funding increment for the boat would be legislatively locked into place (i.e., it would be “automatic”), and Congress would need to take action to stop that increment from being appropriated. Although the Navy in recent years has occasionally expressed interest in using advance appropriations for funding ships, there is little precedent in recent years for funding Navy ships with advance appropriations.
