Highlights
- The Senate and the House
would both slow recent growth in Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) R&D funding. The Senate would provide
$1.3 billion for DHS R&D in FY 2006, a small increase of $23 million
or 1.9 percent (see Table), after increases
of more than $200 million in each of the past three years (see Figure
2).
- The Senate would
provide large boosts for DHS’ top R&D priorities, but would slash
funding in other areas. The biggest gains would go to the $228 million
radiological and nuclear countermeasures portfolio and the $100 million
chemical countermeasures portfolios, both of which would nearly double
in the Senate bill. The Senate would allocate $34 million for explosives
countermeasures (up 72 percent) and $110 million for R&D to counter
portable anti-aircraft missiles (up 80 percent). The House appropriation
would have similar increases for these priorities.
- Large increases
for the top priorities would be offset by steep cuts in other areas
of the DHS R&D portfolio, including threat and vulnerability assessments
(down 39 percent to $40 million), standards development (down 11 percent
to $36 million), rapid prototyping (down two-thirds to $21 million),
cybersecurity, and transportation security.
- The largest
part of the DHS R&D portfolio would continue to be biological countermeasures
with an investment of $384 million in FY 2006, up 6.0 percent from this
year (see Figure 1).
- The Senate
would mostly 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 the FY 2006 request and House appropriation,
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 at reduced funding levels, but the Senate
would keep Coast Guard R&D in the existing CG structure.
DHS R&D in FY 2006 Senate Appropriations
On June 17, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved
its version of the FY 2006 Homeland Security appropriations bill (HR
2360), following on the full House’s May 17 approval of its own version.
The Senate Homeland Security
bill would provide $1.3 billion for DHS R&D in FY 2006, a slight
increase of $23 million or 1.9 percent above FY 2005, slightly less
than the 3.6 percent increase requested by DHS in February but more
than the 1.3 percent increase in the House bill (see Table).
Both the House
and the Senate 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
and Senate appropriations appear to be $1.3 billion above the $29.6
billion White House request, but both chambers 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 and necessitating
difficult reductions in first-responder grants and other homeland security
programs.
Although still
a high priority in these uncertain times, the tighter FY 2006 DHS budget
would require tough choices in DHS R&D funding. 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 Senate appropriation of $1.3 billion,
up $23 million or 1.9 percent and similar to the House allocation
(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.
For details of House appropriations for DHS R&D, see the June
3 R&D Funding Update).
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. The Senate
would agree with the TSA transfer and not the CG transfer, preferring
to keep Coast Guard R&D programs in the Coast Guard budget.
The FY 2006 Senate DHS R&D appropriation, with
a 1.9 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 86 percent to $228 million in FY 2006), including the establishment
of a Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO); chemical countermeasures
(climbing 89 percent to $100 million); explosives countermeasures (up
72 percent to $34 million), and R&D to counter portable anti-aircraft
missiles (up 80 percent to $110 million).
Both the House and the Senate 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. Although Congress has been generally supportive of the proposal,
members of Congress have expressed concerns as to whether the new office
could realistically spend $227 million in its first year and have thus
reduced the request; there are also concerns as to how much authority
the new office will have over other government units and who will perform
the work. Thus, the Senate bill makes most of the appropriation conditional
on DHS submitting a plan clearly outlining a multi-year budget, staffing,
and organizational plan. The Senate also instructs DHS to staff the
DNDO with federal employees and not contractors. DNDO would be funded
as part of the radiological and nuclear countermeasures portfolio, which
would jump 86 percent to $228 million in the Senate, which does not
include another $125 million in non-R&D funds transferred from DHS
Customs and Border Protection for the procurement and deployment of
radiation portal monitors at U.S.
ports.
The Counter MANPADS
portfolio would nearly double in the request and both the House and
Senate bills 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 better protect commercial aviation.
The largest part of the portfolio would continue to be biological countermeasures
with an investment of $384 million in FY 2006, up 6 percent from this
year in the Senate. 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.
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 39 percent to $40 million), standards development
(down 11 percent to $36 million), rapid prototyping (down 73 percent
to $21 million), cybersecurity, and transportation
security. TSA R&D programs in transportation security, funded at
$178 million in FY 2005, would be consolidated within the S&T Directorate
at $100 million in the FY 2006 Senate appropriation, a dramatic reduction,
although some TSA programs would move to the Explosives Countermeasures
portfolio (such as a $10 million air cargo screening technology program).
Both the House and Senate 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 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..
Figure 2. (click
on the image for PDF)
The Senate DHS R&D
appropriation represents a dramatic slowdown from recent gains in the DHS
R&D portfolio (see Figure 2). In its short history, the DHS R&D
portfolio has expanded from nothing to an approximately $300 million transfer
of other agencies’ R&D programs in FY 2002 followed by dramatic gains in
2003, 2004, and 2005 primarily for the creation of new R&D capabilities.
Now that the start-up phase of DHS appears to be complete, the department’s
R&D portfolio has entered a mature phase in which large increases are no
longer assured.
Next Steps
The Senate Homeland
Security bill is expected to go to the full Senate for debate and approval
in the next few weeks. The House has already approved its version of
the bill, so a House-Senate conference to hammer out the final version
of the bill could be convened in July.
-
June 20, 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
