Before departing for a week-long
Fourth of July recess, the House of Representatives kicked off the FY
2003 appropriations process by approving the Defense and Military Construction
(HR 5010 and HR 5011) FY 2003 appropriations bills for the Department
of Defense (DOD). Together, the bills would provide $365 billion for
DOD in FY 2003, a 10 percent increase over the $332 billion current
DOD budget. The House would provide
$58.8 billion for DOD R&D – an increase of 18.9 percent or $9.4
billion from the FY 2002 level of $49.5 billion that would bring DOD
R&D to an all-time high in both current and inflation-adjusted dollars.
In comparison with the request of the Bush Administration, this total
represents a 8.1 percent increase, or an additional $4.4 billion
for DOD R&D (see Table A).
DOD
is by far the largest supporter of R&D in the federal government,
accounting for nearly half the total federal R&D portfolio. Because of
defense cutbacks following the end of the Cold War, DOD’s support for R&D
declined by a third following a peak in FY 1987 but has increased dramatically
in the past few years. The Bush Administration has made increasing DOD spending
in general and DOD development spending in particular a high priority,
especially in the aftermath of September 11. The House would add to the
Administration’s already-generous request for DOD R&D. At $58.8 billion for
FY 2003, the House appropriation would well exceed the peak FY 1987 DOD R&D
investment of $53.7 billion in today’s dollars.
DOD Basic Research ("6.1") and Applied
Research ("6.2") would receive comparatively modest increases
in funding. Basic Research would rise by 3.0 percent to $1.4 billion,
though the Pentagon requested a cut. Applied Research would rise by
a larger 9.0 percent from $4.1 billion to $4.4 billion, again in contrast
to a requested cut (see Table A). (Table
C provides details of “6.1” and “6.2” funding by the military services
and agencies). The "6.1" and "6.2" research accounts
provide a significant share of federal support for several key science and engineering disciplines.
DOD provides nearly one-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 science research and plays a prominent funding role in
other disciplines such as mathematics, oceanography, medical sciences,
chemistry, physics, and environmental sciences. The "6.1"
and "6.2" accounts are also important for the nation's colleges
and universities, which perform more than half of the "6.1"
research and roughly 20 percent of "6.2" research.
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. In the House bill, DOD
S&T, including medical research appropriations outside the RDT&E
account (see below), would exceed $11
billion for the first time to reach $11.7 billion, a 13.7 percent increase,
mostly because of a $1.1 billion or 24.3 percent boost for “6.3” funding.
Advocates of DOD S&T investments pushed last year for $10 billion in FY
2002 S&T funds, a goal Congress granted, and are pushing for an investment
of at least $11 billion in FY 2003. Advocates of DOD S&T in the science and
engineering community argue that DOD S&T funding is essential for building
the knowledge and technology base for future DOD needs, and have successfully
argued that post-Cold War cutbacks over the past decade eroded this base. In
the past year, there has been growing support inside and outside the Pentagon
for setting 3 percent of the DOD budget as a target for the proper level of S&T
investment. These efforts were dealt a setback by the Pentagon request, which
would have cut DOD S&T to $9.7 billion in FY 2003, just 2.6 percent of the
overall DOD budget. The House S&T
appropriation of $11.7 billion would be 3.2 percent of the total DOD budget,
meeting the target. The House
appropriation would bring DOD S&T back up to the FY 1993 level in
inflation-adjusted dollars, its peak funding year before steep post-Cold War
cuts in the mid-1990s.
The
House bill contains a separate $400 million appropriation, outside the
regular R&D accounts, for medical
research (see Table A). Included in
this total is $150 million for breast cancer research and $85 million
for prostate cancer research (up slightly from FY 2002) in peer-reviewed,
competitively awarded grants. The bill also contains $25 million for
other breast cancer research projects, $10 million for ovarian cancer
research, and miscellaneous amounts for research on other medical topics.
These programs were congressionally initiated in the early 1990s and
DOD has never requested funding for them, but Congress has annually
provided funding. The House Defense bill also contains numerous congressionally
designated appropriations for medical research in DOD’s regular accounts,
mostly in the Army and Navy, totaling nearly $315 million. Counting
these appropriations, the Defense bill provides more than $700 million
for congressionally designated medical research projects.
Nearly
all ($9.0 billion) of the enormous $9.4 billion DOD R&D increase
would go to development activities (“6.4” through “6.7” plus other appropriations),
which make up nearly all of the DOD R&D investment. Of the $58.8
billion House appropriation, 89 percent ($52.6 billion) would go to
development activities, leaving only 2 percent for basic research (“6.1”)
and 9 percent for applied research (“6.2”; see Table
A). Under the House bill, Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD; "6.5") and Operational
Systems Development ("6.7") would receive the largest increases.
EMD would rise by 22.1 percent or $2.4 billion to $13.4 billion while
Operational Systems Development would rise by 33.1 percent or $4.8 billion
to $19.1 billion. These categories cover advanced development work,
mostly performed by industrial firms as defense contractors, on specific
weapons systems. Nearly all of the “6.5” increase comes from the $3.5
billion appropriation (same as the request, but up from $1.5 billion
in FY 2002), divided between the Navy and Air Force, for the Joint Strike
Fighter (JSF), a next-generation fighter in development for future use
by all the services and U.S. allies. Over half the total and most of
the increase in “6.7” funding would go to the Air Force for advanced
development work on new military aircraft.
The
Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA), one of the Defense Agencies, would receive $2.8
billion in the House bill, 24.0 percent more than FY 2002 (see Table
B). DARPA’s Biological Warfare Defense program would receive $167
million, up from $147 million in FY 2002. Defense Research Sciences,
DARPA’s basic research program, would rise from $142 million
to $199 million (up 39.5 percent). The Defense Agencies in general would
do very well in the House bill, especially
in the S&T accounts (see Table C).
The FY 2003 House bill would continue the trend in recent years of shifting
S&T investments from the services to Defense-wide agencies; while
Defense-wide S&T would jump by 25.3 percent to reach $5.3 billion,
nearly half the total DOD portfolio, the services’ S&T portfolios
would show smaller increases or, in the Navy’s case, decreases.
The
largest increase among the Defense Agencies, in the aftermath of the
September 11 terrorist attacks, would go to the Chemical
and Biological Defense Program (CBDP) whose R&D portfolio would
jump 81 percent to $995 million, more than double the funding level
from FY 2001 (see Table B). The agency
funds basic and applied research as well as all forms of development
geared toward new technologies to keep U.S. troops safe from biological
and chemical attack on the battlefield. CBDP would receive $385 million
in funds specifically for domestic homeland security, including funds
to develop biological surveillance capabilities for U.S. cities. Last year’s big winner in the FY 2002
budget, the Ballistic Missile
Defense Organization (BMDO), would decline 2.1 percent from the
lofty FY 2002 level to $6.8 billion for R&D; this amount would still
be well above the $4.2 billion FY 2001 funding level. BMDO, renamed
the Missile Defense Agency in the House bill, no longer funds research;
there would be some funds for generic technology development, but now
nearly all BMDO R&D funds go to advanced development, testing, and
evaluation of missile defense systems. BMDO is charged with developing
defensive systems to counter perceived theater and strategic ballistic
missile threats. Although the exact amounts are of course unclear, there
appear to be large increases for development programs in classified
agencies within the Defense Agencies (such as the National Security
Agency; included in “Other *” in Table B).
Among
the service branches, Army, Navy, and Air Force R&D budgets would
all receive large increases. Army R&D would rise from $7.0 billion
to $7.4 billion (a 5.7 percent increase). Navy R&D would rise from
$11.4 billion to $13.6 billion (a 19.3 percent increase). And Air Force
R&D would rise from $14.5 billion to $18.6 billion (a 28.7 percent
increase). As Table C shows, the increases
would be largest for advanced development work; the services’ basic
and applied research programs would mostly show small increases; Army
and Navy applied research would actually decline.
Now
that the full House has approved the Defense bill, it will take up the nondefense appropriations bills. The House, at the urging
of President Bush, had pledged to move the Defense bill first; the
Democratic-controlled Senate did not make such a promise, so it will likely
concentrate on some of the nondefense appropriations
bills first; a Senate Defense bill may not reach the floor until September. Last year, the Defense bill was the last of
the 13 appropriations bills to be signed into law.
- July 8, 2002
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/rd
(new URL)
