Highlights
- The new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will be one of the major
funding sources of R&D in FY 2004. The DHS R&D portfolio will
total $1.04 billion in the final congressional budget, up 56 percent
from FY 2003 (see Table).
-
Congress has decided to
fund the non-R&D Project Bioshield
to procure biodefense countermeasures, a program
first proposed in the President’s State of the Union address this year.
The final DHS budget contains $5.6 billion over 10 years for biodefense
countermeasures, of which $885 million will be available in FY 2004.
-
The new S&T Directorate
in the DHS will have $869 million for R&D activities, 67 percent
more than the current funding level, including $70 million for university
programs and $60 million for R&D on antimissile devices for commercial
aircraft.
R&D in the Department of Homeland Security
On October 1,
President Bush signed into law the first-ever Homeland Security appropriations
bill (HR 2555) providing FY 2004 funding for programs in the newly created
Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But the FY 2004 omnibus bill
currently before Congress would take 0.59 percent off the supposedly
final DHS budget in an across-the-board cut. DHS took shape just months
ago on March 1 with the transfer of nearly 180,000 federal employees
in nearly two dozen federal agencies to the new department. DHS programs
had previously been funded in nine different appropriations bills, but
for the FY 2004 appropriations process both the House and the Senate
consolidated DHS programs into a single Homeland Security appropriations
bill. The final HS bill will
provide $29.2 billion in FY 2004 for discretionary programs in DHS,
a modest 1.3 percent increase; included in this total is $1.04 billion
for DHS R&D, a staggering 56.0 percent or $375 million increase
over FY 2003 (see Table and Figure 1).
(All figures in the Table and this analysis have been adjusted to reflect
the 0.59 percent across-the-board cut in the FY 2004 omnibus bill.)
The final appropriation for DHS R&D is well above the $907 million
request announced in February. (For details of the request for DHS
R&D as well as short history of the creation of the DHS in Public
Law 107-296 (Nov. 2002), see the June 12 AAAS R&D
Funding Update. Some of the figures in the earlier analysis have
been revised since June 12). Congress added $79 million to the request
for transportation security R&D, $60 million to the request for
university programs, and $60 million for antiaircraft missile countermeasures,
partially offset by minor reductions in other areas.
R&D in the Directorate of Science and Technology
Nearly all DHS R&D programs find their home in
the Directorate of Science and Technology, one of four broad directorates
in the new department. The Directorate is led by Charles McQueary, confirmed in March as the first Under Secretary
for Science and Technology, who reports directly to the Secretary for
Homeland Security (Tom Ridge).
The House and the Senate have
agreed on $869 million for R&D in the S&T Directorate, up $348
million or 66.8 percent from the FY 2003 funding level.
One reason
for this enormous increase in funding is that unlike the other directorates
S&T is building many of its capabilities from scratch. Although
the Directorate became the new home of existing Department of Defense,
Energy, and Agriculture programs with an estimated budget of $521 million
in FY 2003, the Directorate will have to create brand-new R&D capabilities
in several areas to address critical knowledge gaps in homeland security.
The Table shows the division of the S&T
Directorate budget among the various program areas for the President’s
request and the final DHS budget. (For more information on the S&T
programs from other agencies that transferred to the DHS this year,
see the June 12 R&D Funding Update).
Unlike
many other R&D funding agencies, which are responsible for research
but are not responsible for bringing technology-based products all the
way to market or deployment, DHS will have responsibility for the entire
spectrum of science and technology, all the way from basic research
to engineering work to development to deployment of new technologies in the hands
of DHS employees and state and local responders. Thus, its R&D portfolio
will at least initially be heavily skewed toward development. In this
way, the DHS portfolio will be very similar to DOD’s portfolio, which
is also heavily oriented toward development over research, rather than
the research-oriented models of NIH or NSF.
Figure 1.
(click on the image to view or download a color
full-page PDF version of the chart)
The final DHS FY 2004 budget will provide a total of $70 million for University
Programs and Fellowship Programs (see Figure 1), a boost of $60
million over the request of $10 million and well above the original
House and Senate proposals. This program will fund several university-based
centers of excellence and will be a funding source dedicated exclusively
to funding university-based research. The Department expects to designate
several university-based centers for homeland security in FY 2004; the
competition for the first such center, oriented toward threat assessments
using the social sciences, resulted recently in an award to the University
of Southern California. Universities
will not be limited to just this pool of money; they will also be able
to compete for R&D funds in the other program areas. This program
will also fund fellowships that will bring scientists and engineers
from academia and private industry to work within DHS for a year or
two.
DHS will also provide $60 million in new funds for R&D on antimissile
devices for commercial aircraft (see Figure 1), in the hopes of
developing and prototyping of antimissile devices that can be fitted
on airplanes. The new funding responds to increasing congressional concern
in recent months that terrorists could launch attacks on U.S.
commercial airplanes using shoulder-fired missiles from the ground,
similar to the failed attacks on an Israeli passenger jet last year
in Africa. The funds are provided within the
Critical Infrastructure Protection program (see Table).
Congress also added to the request for rapid prototyping activities,
bringing total FY 2004 funding to $75 million (see Figure 1), midway
between the House and Senate proposals. This program will assist private
industry in rapidly developing and prototyping new homeland security
technologies to speed the deployment of new technologies by first responders
and DHS employees. DHS will also have $39 million for standards R&D
in FY 2004; this program will certify the effectiveness and performance
capabilities of homeland-security technology products through the work
of a future network of standards certification laboratories, and in
collaboration with Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST). This work should allow DHS operating units, state and local
governments and other potential customers for these products to make
more-informed purchasing decisions.
DHS will make significant
R&D investments in other areas (see Figure 1): $126 million for
the development of radiological / nuclear countermeasures including
detection systems and crisis-response technologies; $197 million for
the development of biological countermeasures to reduce the probability
and impacts of a biological terrorist attack; $52 million for chemical
countermeasures to protect U.S. civilians against chemical attacks;
$9 million for R&D against explosives attacks; $93 million for threat
and vulnerability assessments to develop technologies to analyze and
evaluate threats, especially in information technologies; and $21 million
for R&D on emerging threats. Funded separately from the biological
countermeasures program in the final DHS budget but included within
it in the request is $87 million for construction of a new laboratory
named the National Biodefense Analysis and
Countermeasures Center
in Fort Detrick,
Maryland.
This center was initiated in FY 2003 Department of Defense (DOD) appropriations,
but was immediately transferred to the DHS earlier this year.
DHS plans
to create a new R&D unit in the S&T directorate in FY 2004,
the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA),
modeled on the existing Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
in the Department of Defense (DOD). HSARPA will distribute much of the
R&D money within the directorate, and will have a role in most of
the above areas. HSARPA will award extramural grants for basic and applied
research to promote revolutionary changes in homeland security technologies;
will develop and test potential homeland security technologies; and
will accelerate or prototype the development of homeland security technologies
to get them ready for deployment. HSARPA has already hired employees
and has begun to establish its processes for awarding R&D grants,
and in September issued its first solicitation, for detection systems
for biological and chemical threats. In addition to HSARPA, the Directorate
will create several other organizations and advisory structures over
the next few months to a year in order to carry out its S&T tasks.
For more information on the S&T infrastructure in DHS, see the
June 12 R&D Funding Update.
R&D in Other DHS Directorates and Programs
- Directorate of Border and Transportation Security: This directorate
is by far the largest of the four DHS directorates with a budget of
more than $12 billion in FY 2004. It folds in the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, the Customs Service, and the recently created Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) formerly in the Department of Transportation
(DOT). This directorate inherits TSA’s R&D
programs on aviation security, with an appropriation of $110 million
in FY 2003 rising to $154 million in FY 2004. Congress added $35 million
to the Administration request for a total of $45 million for R&D
on next-generation explosive detection technologies in commercial aviation,
and an additional $45 million (for a total of $55 million) for air cargo
security R&D. This R&D portfolio is expected to result in a
report next April on options for inspecting air cargo on commercial
flights including costs and timetables for implementing comprehensive
cargo screening.
- Directorate for Information
Analysis and Infrastructure Protection: R&D is not a large part
of this directorate, totaling just $5 million in FY 2004 out of a total
budget of $839 million. Although R&D spending is a small part of
this directorate’s budget, most of its research and analysis needs on
cybersecurity will be performed by the S&T
Directorate. The Information directorate will also rely on research
performed by other agencies such as Commerce’s National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST).
- Directorate of Emergency Preparedness
and Response: This directorate will coordinate all federal assistance
in response to disasters (including natural disasters) and domestic
attacks, and folds in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
There are no R&D programs within its $8.4 billion budget in FY 2004.
Congress and the President have agreed to set aside $5.6 billion over
the next 10 years to procure biodefense countermeasures
from the private sector, which could provide strong incentives for private-sector
investments in biodefense R&D. The
final DHS budget provides $885 million in FY 2004 and an additional
$4.7 billion between 2005 and 2013 for the program named Project BioShield
in the President’s State of the Union address. Although not an R&D
program, the program is designed to encourage private-sector R&D
investments in biodefense vaccines, therapeutics, and other countermeasures
by providing a guaranteed government market for future products. DHS,
through the Emergency Preparedness Directorate, will purchase and stockpile
these countermeasures using the $5.6 billion total appropriation. After
the Senate balked at making the program an entitlement (mandatory) program
as originally proposed by the Administration, the Administration and
the House agreed to fund it through discretionary funds but through
an advance appropriation setting aside a decade’s worth of funding in
the FY 2004 DHS bill.
- Coast Guard: The Coast Guard’s R&D portfolio became part of DHS
in March. DHS takes over responsibility of the Coast Guard from DOT,
but the Coast Guard remains an independent entity under the DHS umbrella
and retains an independent $16 million R&D portfolio for its science
and technology needs.
Other Homeland Security R&D Programs
Although DHS will be the focal point for homeland security-related R&D
in the federal government, the majority of federal homeland security-related
R&D will actually remain outside the department. Bioterrorism R&D programs currently within the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) will stay there instead of transferring to
DHS. The NIH bioterrorism
R&D portfolio for FY 2004 would be $1.6 billion in the FY 2004 omnibus
bill ready for final congressional approval, mostly in the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The DHS legislation
signed into law last November gives the DHS Secretary authority with
the HHS Secretary to set priorities and strategy for human health-related
research on terrorist threats, but no funding authority; research grants
will continue to flow from NIH out of the NIH budget and be administered
by NIH personnel using existing funding mechanisms, but research priorities
will come from DHS. Other counterterrorism R&D programs in other
agencies, notably EPA, DOD, and DOE, will continue to remain outside
DHS. (For more on the NIH R&D portfolio, see the NIH
R&D Funding Update).
Next Steps
President Bush
signed the Homeland Security appropriations bill into law on October
1, so DHS became only the second federal department (after DOD) to receive
a final FY 2004 budget. The FY 2004 omnibus bill, however, would impose
a 0.59 percent across-the-board cut on non-defense agencies, including
DHS. Final action on the omnibus bill has been delayed until late January;
if the omnibus bill is signed into law as is, then DHS will have to impose the reduction on all its programs.
(This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the FY 2004 appropriations process.
This analysis includes information on R&D in House-Senate conference
appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security. The complete
series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated
analyses of R&D in FY 2004 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd)
in the “FY 2004 R&D” or the “What’s
New” sections.)
- September 24, 2003 (revised December 11)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
