Contingency operation

A contingency operation is a United States Department of Defense operation, conducted in response to natural disasters, terrorists, subversives, or as otherwise directed by appropriate authority to protect national interests. The designation is made by a finding by the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, and triggers the implementation of a variety of wartime plans and preparations throughout the federal government, and within each of the military branches. Contingency operations are often referred to more specifically as overseas contingency operations (OCO), a term which is often substituted because there has not been a recent war on United States soil. The term's best known use is in the United States Congress' Overseas Contingency Operations funding, a discretionary budgetappropriation sometimes described as a slush fund used originally for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now used more broadly for other expenditures associated primarily with the war on terror.