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Go to: Table
A. FY 2001 DOD R&D by Program in House-Senate Conference
Table
B. FY 2001 DOD R&D by Agency in House-Senate Conference
PDF version of this document
Related sites:
AAAS R&D Funding Update June 2 (revised
June 8): "House Boosts DOD Basic Research by
12 Percent, Provides $8.8 Billion for S&T," House Appropriations
for DOD R&D
AAAS R&D Funding Update May 22: "Senate
Increases DOD R&D by 3.5 Percent, Boosts S&T to $8.8 Billion,"
Senate Appropriations for DOD R&D
AAAS Report XXV: Research and Development
FY 2001 (President's Request for FY 2001)
Chapter 8:
R&D in the FY 2001 Department of Defense Budget
-Kei Koizumi, AAAS
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(This analysis is part of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the FY 2001 congressional appropriations
process. This analysis includes information on R&D in the House-Senate
conference report for DOD appropriations. The complete series of AAAS
R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses of
R&D by agency in FY 2001 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/R&D)
in the "FY 2001 R&D" or the "What's
New" sections.)
Congress is ready to send to President Clinton a final
FY 2001 Defense appropriations bill providing substantial increases
for Department of Defense (DOD) R&D. On July 17, a House-Senate
conference committee released a conference report (final version) of
the Defense appropriations bill (HR 4576) reconciling differences between
the House and Senate versions of the bill. The final Defense bill adds
even more money to the substantial increases contained in the House
and Senate bills for most DOD R&D programs, in contrast to the cuts
requested by the Pentagon and the Clinton Administration. Assuming that
the Senate approves and the President signs the bill, both of which
are likely, DOD's R&D in FY 2001 will total $41.9 billion,
$3.4 billion more than the President's request and $2.6 billion or 6.6
percent more than FY 2000 (see Tables A
and B). [The Senate approved the conference
report on July 27, and President Clinton signed the bill into law on
August 9.]
The final Defense bill boosts DOD funding of basic
research ("6.1") by $152 million or 13.1 percent to $1.3 billion.
The final increase is above the House proposed increase of 11.5 percent
and the Senate proposal of 10.5 percent. Applied research ("6.2")
also increases substantially by 7.9 percent to $3.7 billion. Including
DOD's medical research programs, DOD S&T (["6.1"
through "6.3" programs, representing DOD's investment in basic
and applied research and technology development, plus medical research
contained in other accounts]) will increase by 8.3 percent to $9.4 billion,
considerably more than the requested level of $7.6 billion.
The final Defense bill contains substantial increases
for the overall DOD budget as well as for R&D programs, increases
even larger than those proposed by the President in February. The $288
billion total for the final Defense bill, which funds most but not all
of DOD, is $4 billion more than the request and more than $20 billion
above the FY 2000 funding level. Military health care, procurement,
and operations and maintenance accounts are the top priorities for Congress
in the Defense bill, and receive even larger increases than the R&D
programs.
The final Defense bill provides large increases for
most basic research ("6.1") accounts. DOD requested
a 4.9 percent increase for "6.1" but the Senate responded
with a 10.5 percent increase, and the House went even higher with a
11.5 percent increase. The final bill goes higher still with an appropriation
of $1.3 billion, 13.1 percent or $152 million more than FY 2000 (see
Table A). Although there will be a slight
cut in Air Force basic research (down 1.2 percent to $211 million),
Navy basic research (up 5.1 percent to $393 million) and Army basic
research (up 2.8 percent to $210 million) will increase. (All figures
in this analysis are adjusted to reflect rescissions and general reductions
of approximately 1 percent across the board. Before the reductions,
for example, Air Force basic research would have been even with FY 2000).
The largest increase will go to "6.1" in the Defense Agencies
(DA), which will jump 35.3 percent to $498 million. Within DA "6.1,"
University Research Initiatives will increase from $224 million to $292
million to fund university-based projects, including more than a dozen
congressionally designated projects, across a broad range of science
and engineering disciplines. In recent years, the Senate has proposed
large increases to "6.1" while the House has appropriated
smaller increases or cuts, and final appropriations have generally split
the difference. But this year's House-proposed increase was a departure
from the recent pattern, and the final Defense bill also breaks from
pattern by going above both the House and the Senate.
The applied research ("6.2") accounts
total $3.7 billion in the final bill, nearly 8 percent above the FY
2000 funding level. As a result, total DOD support of research (basic
plus applied) will be $5.0 billion (up 9.2 percent), the largest increase
in more than a decade, compared to a requested cut.
The "6.1" and "6.2" research accounts
provide a significant share of federal support for several key scientific
and engineering disciplines. DOD provides nearly a third of all
federal support for engineering research, and a majority of federal
support for some key engineering subfields. DOD also provides more than
40 percent of total federal support for computer sciences research,
and plays a strong funding role in other disciplines such as mathematics,
oceanography, medical sciences, chemistry, physics, and environmental
sciences.
Figure 1. (Click on the image to view or download a full-screen PDF version
of the chart)
DOD's research portfolio by science and engineering
discipline is shown in Figure 1. Because of DOD's national security
mission, the portfolio is weighted toward disciplines such as engineering,
mathematics, physics, and computer sciences which have relevance to
future weapons systems, but DOD also supports research in other fields
for national security reasons, including the life sciences to combat
bioterrorism threats and to ensure healthy solidiers, and environmental
sciences (chiefly oceanography) to assist the Navy in operating its
ships.
The "6.1" and "6.2" accounts are
especially important for the nation's colleges and universities,
which perform more than half of "6.1" research and roughly
20 percent of "6.2" research. DOD is the third largest sponsor
of federal R&D at colleges and universities, behind only the National
Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. DOD's impact,
however, is concentrated in several key fields, shown in Figure 2 below.
DOD provides a tenth of federal support for academic R&D, but more
than half of all federal support for mechanical engineering and electrical
engineering at universities, and nearly half of all federal support
for computer sciences and materials engineering. The FY 2001 increases
for "6.1" and "6.2" should boost DOD support for
academic R&D in FY 2001, which has declined significantly in recent
years due to cuts in the mid- to late 1990s in these accounts.
Figure 2. (Click on the image to view or download a full-screen PDF version
of the chart)
The final Defense bill contains a separate $349 million
appropriation, outside the regular R&D accounts, for congressionally
designated medical R&D (see Table A) plus another $66
million for medical care-related information technology development
for a total of $415 million. This appropriation for peer-reviewed, competitively
awarded research grants continues the recent expansion of DOD's effort
in medical research. The final bill divides the $349 million medical
R&D total into $175 million for breast cancer research (up from
$172 million in FY 2000), $100 million for prostate cancer research
(up from $74 million), $12 million for ovarian cancer research, $6 million
for other cancer research, and more than $50 million for peer reviewed
medical research on other topics. The Defense bill also contains numerous
congressionally designated medical research in DOD's regular accounts,
mostly in the Army and Navy, including R&D on HIV, alcoholism, neuroscience,
bone marrow disease, Gulf War illness, and funding for medical laboratory
facilities around the nation. Counting these appropriations, the Defense
bill provides nearly $750 million for congressionally designated medical
research projects.
The "6.1," "6.2," and "6.3"
categories are often grouped together as "Science and Technology"
(S&T). This category encompasses basic research, applied research,
and advanced technology development, which contribute to a broad knowledge
base with potential applications to a wide variety of military as well
as civilian uses. S&T is separate from the "6.4" and higher
categories, which are focused on the development and testing of specific
weapons systems. DOD S&T declined steeply in the 1990s, but in FY
2000 DOD S&T, including the medical research appropriations
formerly appropriated within the "6.3" category, exceeded
$8 billion for the first time since FY 1994 thanks to strong congressional
support for an appropriation of $8.7 billion. Many science and technology
organizations and defense observers called on DOD to maintain S&T
funding at a minimum of $8 billion in 2000 dollars, but the Pentagon
requested only $7.6 billion for S&T in FY 2001. The final Defense
bill far exceeds the request to bring S&T to $9.4 billion,
up 8.3 percent from FY 2000. [This total includes medical research outside
the regular "6.1" through "6.3" categories.]
Among the Defense Agencies, the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will receive $2.0 billion in FY 2001
(up 6.7 percent; see Table B). Most
DARPA programs that are high priorities for the Administration will
receive increases, although not as large as requested. Extensible Information
Systems, a key program in the Administration's Information Technology
initiative on fundamental IT research, will see its funding rise from
$30 million to $53 million, though this falls short of the request for
$69 million. Computing Systems and Communications Technology, another
IT initiative component, falls short of the $377 million request but
will still rise from $321 million in FY 2000 to $334 million in FY 2001.
Congress added to the request for Biological Warfare Defense, a program
that funds R&D aimed at countering bioterrorism threats, and FY
2001 funding will be $168 million, up from $132 million.
The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization's (BMDO)
budget will also increase substantially, by 22.7 percent to $4.2 billion.
The BMDO appropriation funds continued development and testing of national
and theater missile defense systems, including $1.9 billion for development
of a national missile defense. Although a recent, widely publicized
failure of a missile defense test casts into doubt the current timetable
calling for President Clinton to make a decision this year on whether
to commit to deploying a national defense system, the additional funds
will allow BMDO to continue developing missile defense systems and to
try to fix problems revealed in the recent test.
[The House approved the Defense bill conference report
on July 19, and the Senate on July 27. President Clinton signed the
bill into law on August 9, making the Defense bill only the second of
the 13 FY 2001 appropriations bills to be signed into law] (the first,
the Military Construction bill, also funds DOD programs). The substantial
increases for DOD result from a bipartisan consensus that the defense
budget needs to be increased substantially, and this consensus has made
passage of the defense-related appropriations relatively easy and non-controversial.
The remaining 11 bills covering domestic programs, however, will be
much harder to get enacted because unlike the defense bills, Congress
has allocated level funding or even cuts to them while President Clinton
has insisted on large increases. Because of the large differences between
the President and Congress over domestic spending priorities, the remaining
bills may not get signed into law until late September or October.
- July 19, 2000 (revised August 10)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
American Association for the Advancement of Science
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
science_policy@aaas.org
http://www.aaas.org/spp/R&D
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