In a rush to approve all
13 FY 2003 appropriations bills before a month-long August recess, the
Senate Appropriations Committee approved on July 18 its version of the
FY 2003 Defense appropriations bill (HR 5010) providing funding for
the Department of Defense (DOD). Earlier in the month, the full House
approved its own version of the bill. The
Senate would provide $57.7 billion for DOD R&D - an increase of
16.5 percent or $8.2 billion from the FY 2002 level that would bring
DOD R&D to an all-time high in both current and inflation-adjusted
dollars. The House would go even higher with an appropriation of
$58.8 billion, an 18.9 percent increase. Both the House and the Senate
would exceed the Bush Administration request,
by $3.2 billion in the Senate appropriation (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. Both the House
and the Senate would add to the Administration’s request for DOD R&D.
At $57.7 billion for FY 2003, the Senate appropriation would well exceed
the peak FY 1987 DOD R&D investment of $53.7 billion in today’s
dollars, and the House would go even higher. (For information on the
President’s FY 2003 request for DOD R&D and historical trends in
DOD R&D, please see Chapter
6 of AAAS
Report XXVII: R&D FY 2003. For information on House appropriations
for DOD R&D, please see the July 8 AAAS R&D
Funding Update.)
DOD Basic Research (“6.1”) and Applied Research (“6.2”) would receive
significant boosts in the Senate bill, though smaller than the increases
for development. Basic Research would rise by 7.6 percent to $1.5
billion, a gain of $104 million, though the Pentagon requested a cut.
Applied Research would rise by 4.8 percent from $4.1 billion to $4.3
billion, again in contrast to a requested cut (see Table
A). The House would provide a smaller increase for “6.1” and a larger
one for “6.2” funding. (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 Senate 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 $11.1 billion, an 8.0 percent
increase, mostly because of a $591 million or 13.5 percent boost for
“6.3” funding. The House would go even higher with $11.7 billion for
S&T. 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
Senate S&T appropriation of $11.1 billion would be 3.0 percent of
the total DOD budget, just meeting the target; the House appropriation
would total 3.2 percent. The Senate and House appropriations would both
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 Senate bill contains
a separate $394 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
$10 million for ovarian cancer research, and $50 million for peer-reviewed
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. These programs are
managed by the Army.
Nearly all ($8.0 billion)
of the enormous $8.2 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 $57.7 billion Senate
appropriation, 89 percent ($51.5 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 Senate and House bills, Engineering
and Manufacturing Development (EMD; “6.5”) and Operational Systems Development
(“6.7”) would receive the largest increases. EMD would rise by 26.1
percent or $2.9 billion to $13.8 billion in the Senate bill while Operational
Systems Development would also rise by 26.1 percent to $18.1 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
(just slightly less than 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.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), one of the Defense
Agencies, would receive $2.7 billion in the Senate bill, 18.9 percent
more than FY 2002 (see Table B). DARPA’s
Biological Warfare Defense program would receive $146 million, nearly
the same as FY 2002. Defense Research Sciences, DARPA’s
basic research program, would rise from $142 million to $187 million.
The Defense Agencies in general would do very well in the Senate bill,
especially in the S&T accounts (see Table
C). The FY 2003 Senate and House bills 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 22.3
percent in the Senate plan to reach $5.1 billion, nearly half the total
DOD portfolio, the Amy and Navy’s S&T portfolios would decline and
the Air Force S&T portfolio would show a smaller increase than the
Defense-wide portfolio.
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 84 percent to $1.0 billion (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, and is heavily
involved in developing counter-terrorism technologies.
Last year’s big winner in
the FY 2002 budget, the Ballistic
Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), would decline 0.8 percent from
the lofty FY 2002 level to $6.9 billion for R&D; this amount would
still be well above the $4.2 billion FY 2001 funding level. BMDO 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. The Senate total includes $814 million in
a special account that the Senate would allow for either BMDO or counter-terrorism
activities at the discretion of the President. (This analysis assumes
that the money would be allocated to BMDO because of the Administration’s
stated desire to increase BMDO spending, and because of the great detail
the Senate itself provides in how BMDO should allocate the $814 million.)
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 4.4 percent
increase). Navy R&D would rise from $11.4 billion to $13.2 billion
(a 16.0 percent increase). And Air Force R&D would rise from $14.5
billion to $18.4 billion (a 27.3 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
and in some cases would actually decline.
The full House has already approved its Defense bill, and the Senate version
now heads to the Senate floor. Although it is ready for floor debate,
the Senate calendar for the next two weeks is overloaded with other
legislative priorities, including the proposed Department of Homeland
Security, so the Senate Defense bill may not be approved by the full
Senate before the August recess. When the Senate does approve the bill,
the House-Senate conference should be relatively easy because of the
similar overall totals in the House and Senate versions, but it may
not be possible to schedule a conference until September. Last year,
the Defense bill was the last of the 13 appropriations bills to be signed
into law, but this year the President and the House would like to make
it the first. Considering the slow progress of the other appropriations
bills (only the Military Construction bill has been approved by both
chambers), this may be a realistic goal, and the Defense bill may be
one of the few appropriations bills to be signed into law by the October
1 start of FY 2003. For R&D, the large increases provided in both
the House and Senate versions all but guarantee a record year for DOD
R&D in FY 2003.
- July 22, 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)
