Highlights
- Recent growth in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) R&D funding
would slow in FY 2006, but would still gain some ground in an era of
tight budgets. The House would provide $1.3 billion for DHS R&D
in FY 2006, a small increase of $16 million or 1.3 percent (see Table),
after increases of more than $200 million in each of the past three
years.
- The House would provide large
boosts for DHS’ top R&D priorities. There would be $146 million
for radiological and nuclear countermeasures (up nearly 20 percent)
to establish a Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), $90 million
for chemical countermeasures (up 70 percent), $55 million for explosives
countermeasures (nearly triple last year’s funding) and $110 million
for R&D to counter portable anti-aircraft missiles (up 80 percent).
- Large increases for the top priorities
would be offset by cuts in other areas of the DHS R&D portfolio,
including threat and vulnerability assessments (down 29 percent to $47
million), standards development (down 11 percent to $36 million), rapid
prototyping (down nearly two-thirds to $30 million), cybersecurity,
and transportation security.
- The largest part of the DHS R&D
portfolio would continue to be biological countermeasures with an investment
of $360 million in FY 2006, down slightly from this year.
- The House would agree with the
FY 2006 budget proposal to finish the process of consolidating all DHS
R&D into the Directorate of Science and Technology (S&T). In
FY 2006, R&D programs that transferred into DHS with the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) and the Coast Guard (CG) in 2003 would
be moved out of those units into S&T, though at reduced funding
levels.
DHS R&D in FY 2006 House Appropriations
On May 17, the House of
Representatives kicked off the FY 2006 appropriations process by debating
and approving its version of the FY 2006 Homeland Security appropriations
bill (HR 2360), the first of the House’s FY 2006 appropriations bills.
The House Homeland Security bill would provide
$1.3 billion for DHS R&D in FY 2006, a slight increase of $16
million or 1.3 percent above FY 2005, slightly less than the 3.6 percent
increase requested by DHS in February (see Table).
The House would provide $30.8 billion
in discretionary funding for DHS in FY 2006, an increase of $1.4 billion
(excluding FY 2005 disaster relief supplementals
and Bioshield funding) that represents a maturation of the homeland-security
effort after the frenzied start-up phase of the last several years.
The House appropriation appears to be $1.3 billion above the $29.6 billion
White House request, but the House would reject the Administration’s
proposal for nearly $2 billion in new user fees to finance airport security,
leaving overall program funding below the request.
Although still a high priority
in these uncertain times, the tighter FY 2006 DHS budget would require
some tough choices in spending priorities. The DHS R&D portfolio
mirrors the trends in the overall DHS budget: after annual increases
greater than 20 percent in the first few years of its existence, growth
in the DHS R&D portfolio would level off with an FY 2006 House appropriation
of $1.3 billion, up $16 million or 1.3 percent (see Table).
(For details of the President’s request for DHS R&D, please see
Chapter 12 of AAAS Report XXX: R&D
FY 2006 or the February 25 DHS
R&D Funding Update).
Increases in some parts of the DHS
R&D portfolio would require offsetting cuts in other areas that
have previously enjoyed large increases. Unlike other DHS activities,
DHS inherited few R&D programs from other agencies at its birth
in 2003; therefore, the large increases in R&D funding for the past
few years were devoted to building R&D capabilities from scratch
to meet the urgent need for science and technology to address homeland
security concerns. Now that the start-up phase of DHS R&D is mostly
complete, R&D programs should see more stable funding profiles with
trade-offs between different areas based on changing assessments of
DHS’ science and technology needs.
R&D in the Directorate of Science and Technology
Currently, most DHS R&D
programs have their home in the Directorate
of Science and Technology (S&T). This Directorate has responsibility
for setting homeland-security R&D goals and priorities, coordinating
homeland security R&D throughout the federal government, funding homeland
security R&D, facilitating the transfer and deployment of technologies for
homeland security, and advising the DHS Secretary on all scientific and
technical matters.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
In FY 2006, DHS proposes
to finish consolidating all R&D activities within the S&T Directorate.
Through this year, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
and Coast Guard (CG), which transferred to DHS from the Department of
Transportation (DOT) in 2003, have retained their own R&D programs,
but in FY 2006 the House would agree with the proposal to have the S&T Directorate
take over their R&D portfolios and become responsible for 100 percent
of the department’s $1.3 billion in R&D funding. Nearly all
of the $1.4 billion total S&T Directorate budget would go toward
R&D activities except for $81 million in management expenses.
In an era of record-breaking
federal budget deficits and tightening restraints on discretionary spending,
even defense and homeland security spending are not immune from tough
choices in the FY 2006 budget, requiring careful balancing of priorities.
The FY 2006 House DHS R&D appropriation, with a 1.3 percent increase
far smaller than past increases allowing every program area to receive
more funding, would set clear priorities among DHS’ R&D program
areas, mostly mirroring DHS’ own priorities
(see Table and Figure 1). The top priorities in the DHS R&D portfolio would be radiological
and nuclear countermeasures (increasing 20 percent to $146 million in
FY 2006), including the establishment of a Domestic Nuclear Detection
Office (DNDO); chemical countermeasures (climbing 70 percent to $90
million); explosives countermeasures (up 178 percent to $55 million)
and R&D to counter portable anti-aircraft missiles (up 80 percent
to $110 million).
The House would provide $127 million in FY 2006 for a new Domestic Nuclear
Detection Office (DNDO), down dramatically from the $227 million
request but still a significant start-up appropriation. The DNDO would
develop, acquire, and support a domestic system to detect and report
terrorist attempts to transport or use radiological or nuclear materials.
DNDO will be staffed with a multi-agency team and will coordinate its
efforts with the intelligence community, and hopes to fund R&D,
develop new technologies, and transition these technologies to field
use. Within this portfolio, there would also be $9 million to finish
construction of a Radiological / Nuclear Countermeasures Test and Evaluation
Complex (Rad/Nuc CTEC) at the Nevada Test
Site to provide laboratory facilities for this work. DNDO would be funded
as part of the radiological and nuclear countermeasures portfolio, which
would jump 19.4 percent to $146 million.
The explosives countermeasures portfolio
would nearly triple from $20 million to $55 million. The House would
allocate $40 million of the FY 2006 funds specifically for air cargo
explosives detection technologies, including $30 million for three air
cargo screening pilot projects.
The Counter MANPADS portfolio would
nearly double in both the request and the House bill to $110 million
(up 80.3 percent). Man Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) are shoulder-mounted
portable air missiles that have been used (unsuccessfully so far) against
passenger aircraft. Fears of a successful MANPADS attack against commercial
aircraft have jump-started DHS’ Counter MANPADS effort. The increased
FY 2006 investment would allow DHS to develop, prototype, and test promising
technologies in aircraft to give policymakers a range of options on
how to most effectively protect commercial aviation.
Another area due for a large increase
is R&D for Support of DHS Components, up 46 percent to $80 million.
This R&D portfolio represents S&T Directorate programs that
directly support the missions and capabilities of other DHS units, such
as the Border Patrol, the Secret Service, the Emergency Preparedness
and Response directorate, and the Coast Guard. Key technologies explored
in this portfolio are border surveillance technologies, container shipping
security, disaster modeling and simulation capabilities, and protective
equipment.
Large increases for the priorities above would be offset by cuts in other
areas of the DHS R&D portfolio, including threat and vulnerability
assessments (down 29 percent to $47 million), standards development
(down 11 percent to $36 million), rapid prototyping (down 61 percent
to $30 million), cybersecurity, and transportation
security. TSA and Coast Guard R&D programs, mostly in transportation
security, funded at a combined $196 million in FY 2005 would be consolidated
within the S&T Directorate at $117 million in the FY 2006 House
appropriation, a dramatic reduction. But the House would add funds to
some areas that were proposed for cuts in the DHS request, including
a 33 percent boost for critical infrastructure R&D to $36 million
instead of a proposed cut, and a doubling of the R&D effort in interoperable
communications technology for first responders to $42 million instead
of flat funding. The House would also add $10 million in new funds for
Technology Development and Transfer, to allow DHS to address criticisms
that it has been slow to actually transfer and deploy new technologies
from the laboratory to the front lines of homeland security.
The House would agree with the request to make modest cuts to $64 million
for University Programs and Fellowship Programs, down from $70 million
in FY 2005 but still well above $22 million last year. The House explains
this cut by noting that the program does not expect to spend $45 million
in FY 2005 funds by the end of this year, allowing total FY 2006 funding
to exceed $100 million. This program funds several university-based
centers of excellence and is a funding source dedicated exclusively
to funding university-based research. DHS has already designated four
university-based centers for homeland security; the latest, awarded
to the University of Maryland
and its partners, will focus on behavioral and social aspects of terrorism.
Another focuses on threat assessments and two focus on agro-terrorism.
The fifth center, to be awarded this year, will
focus on preparations and responses to terrorist attacks, and will be
followed by three other centers to be awarded by the end of FY 2006.
The program also funds cooperative centers awarded in collaboration
with other federal agencies for research areas of mutual interest: there
will soon be a joint DHS-EPA award for a center on microbial risk assessment,
followed by two more cooperative centers by the end of FY 2006. This
program also funds fellowships and scholarships that fund graduate education
and research opportunities for scientists and engineers.
The largest part of the portfolio would continue to be biological countermeasures
with an investment of $360 million in FY 2006, down slightly from this
year. Although no money would be requested, construction of the National
Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center
(NBACC) at Fort Detrick,
Maryland would continue in FY 2006
with previously appropriated funds toward a target completion date of
2008. There would also be $23 million in new funds to start construction
of a new National Bio and Agrodefense Facility
(NBAF), a $450 million total project with a scheduled completion of
2010 to enhance DHS capabilities to respond to food or animal-borne
terrorist threats and to replace DHS’ existing facility on Plum
Island, New York.
Most of the above S&T directorate
funds will be spent in federal laboratories or federally funded R&D
centers (FFRDCs; government-owned, contractor-operated
laboratories). DHS has an Office for National Laboratories that coordinates
DHS interactions with DOE national laboratories possessing expertise
in homeland security. Over the past year, DHS has set up its own FFRDC,
a new Homeland Security Institute (HSI), and has also consolidated R&D
activities at laboratories it inherited from other departments. The
extramural R&D portfolio in the S&T directorate is managed by
the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA),
modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in
the Department of Defense (DOD). HSARPA awards extramural grants for
basic and applied research to promote revolutionary changes in homeland
security technologies; develops and tests potential homeland security
technologies; and accelerates or prototypes the development of homeland
security technologies to get them ready for deployment.
Next Steps and Possible Impacts
The House approved
its version of the Homeland Security bill on May 17. The Senate Appropriations
Committee is expected to draft its version in June.
-
June 3, 2005
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding
Updates on FY 2006 congressional appropriations. The complete series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2006 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2006 R&D" or the "What's New"
sections.)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
AAAS R&D
Web site: www.aaas.org/spp/rd
