- The House would provide $69.2 billion for R&D in the Department of
Defense (DOD), $3.2 billion more than the
current year for a 4.8 percent increase (see Table
A). 95 percent of the increase would go to development programs.
- The big winner in the House and the Pentagon request would be the missile
defense program. Funding for development in the Missile Defense
Agency would jump 12 percent to $8.5 billion in FY 2005 in preparation
for initial deployment of missile defenses later this year (see Table
B).
- The House would add funds for DOD support of basic and applied research. Basic research (“6.1”) would gain 4.1
percent to $1.5 billion, even though an earlier House authorization
and the Pentagon request would have made cuts (see Table
A). Applied research (“6.2”) would gain 3.3 percent to $4.6 billion,
again despite cuts in the Pentagon request and the House authorization.
- DOD “Science and Technology” (S&T) would increase $444 million or
3.5 percent to $13.0 billion in the House plan. S&T, which includes
research, medical research, and technology development, would exceed 3 percent of the total DOD budget because of $2.4 billion
added to the request (see Table C).
- The Pentagon’s five-year budget plans call for steep future cuts in DOD’s
S&T investments. DOD
S&T is projected to fall through FY 2006 and rise only modestly
thereafter, ending up at $11.2 billion in FY 2009, 18 percent below
this year’s funding level after adjusting for inflation and only 2.3
percent of the projected FY 2009 DOD budget. DOD
support for basic research (“6.1”) would fall 17 percent over five
years, while applied research (“6.2”) would fall 11 percent.
On June 22, the House approved a $416 billion
FY 2005 Defense appropriations bill (HR 4613) that would provide record-breaking
sums for Department of Defense (DOD) R&D. The Defense bill, the third of the 13 FY 2005
appropriations bills to pass the House, funds nearly all
of DOD’s regular budget and would also give DOD $25 billion in
emergency funds for costs associated with the continuing occupation
of Iraq
and Afghanistan.
All told, DOD is expected to have at least $426 billion in FY 2005,
but even more funds may be necessary in FY 2005 to pay for further unbudgeted
costs in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
The House bill appears to appropriate $69 billion for DOD’s main RDT&E
account in FY 2005, but across-the-board reductions contained elsewhere
in the bill would reduce the total by more than $1.1 billion. All figures
in the tables and in this analysis have been reduced to reflect the
across-the-board reductions.
The House Defense bill follows a House-approved
defense authorization bill (HR 4200, approved May 20) authorizing similar
totals for the DOD overall and providing detailed policy guidance, but
the House Defense appropriations bill would add significantly to authorized
levels for DOD R&D, especially in DOD support of basic and applied
research. (For details of R&D in the FY 2005 DOD request, see the
February 20 AAAS R&D Funding Update on DOD
in the FY 2005 request; for details of House and Senate authorizations
for DOD R&D in FY 2005, see the June 2 AAAS
R&D Funding Update.)
Priorities in
DOD R&D
The House would give DOD $69.2 billion for its R&D programs, an increase
of 4.8 percent or $3.2 billion that would give DOD its largest R&D
budget in history, following substantial increases in each of the
past four years (see Figure 1). Nearly all of the increase would go
to development programs. Of the $3.2 billion increase, only a net $164
million would go to basic and applied research.
Even the modest
dollar increases for research would be an improvement over requested
and authorized cuts. DOD support
of basic and applied research would
increase in FY 2005 under the House plan. In the request, DOD’s
“6.1” (basic research) and “6.2” (applied research) activities combined
would fall 10.6 percent to $5.2 billion in FY 2005. In an authorization
bill the House passed in May, the House would have cut DOD “6.1” plus
“6.2” by 5 percent. But the House appropriation would add funds to both
plans and provide a total of $6.0 billion for DOD “6.1” plus “6.2”,
an increase of 3.5 percent over FY 2004.
Basic research funding (the “6.1” category) would rise $58 million to
$1.5 billion in the House appropriation, in contrast to a steep requested
cut. Most of the increase would
go to congressionally designated research projects (earmarks), but some
core DOD research funding would also increase. This
year, funding for the University Research Initiatives (URI) program
switches from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) to the three
services. URI competitively awards basic research grants to university
performers; in FY 2005, the House would continue URI in the three services
at a combined level of $296 million, up $13 million from the FY 2004
funding level. The broader Defense Research Sciences programs, which
fund research at DOD laboratories, universities, and other performers,
would collectively total $915 million in the House plan, up substantially
from $884 million in FY 2004.
Figure 1. (click
on the image to view or download a color, full-size PDF version of the
chart)
The
House would provide $446 million for congressionally
designated medical research programs in FY 2005 (see Table
A) in the Defense Health Program, outside the regular RDT&E
accounts. Included in the total would be $150 million for breast cancer
research, $85 million for prostate cancer, and $10 million for ovarian
cancer in peer-reviewed, competitively awarded grants (all unchanged
from FY 2004). Most of the remaining appropriation would go to earmarked
research projects on medical topics.
DOD funding of “S&T” (the “6.1” through
“6.3” categories plus medical research) would climb to $13.0 billion in FY 2005, an increase of $444 million or
3.5 percent (see Table C). For
the past several years, Congress has been more supportive of S&T
funding than the Pentagon, and so far the pattern holds true for the
FY 2005 budget. The House appropriation would be $2.4 billion more than
the $10.6 billion DOD request. 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 few years, there has been growing
support inside and outside the Pentagon for setting 3 percent of the
DOD budget as a goal for the proper level of S&T investment. The
last three budgets, including this year’s, have met that goal after
taking out Iraq
and Afghanistan
war spending. The FY 2005 request, however, would cut S&T funding
steeply, lowering the S&T/budget ratio to 2.64 percent; the House
bill would boost the ratio to 3.24 percent, excluding emergency Iraq
funding. In May, the House authorized a ratio of 2.8 percent.
The House appropriation would bring DOD S&T to its highest level in
15 years. Although DOD S&T was substantially higher in inflation-adjusted
terms during the height of the Cold War in the late 1980s (see Figure
1), DOD S&T has increased in recent years after hitting post-Cold
War lows in the late 1990s (see Figure 2). While this is a relief for
DOD S&T advocates, Figure 2 shows that the composition of the DOD
S&T portfolio has been changing. DOD support of basic research has
increased relatively little, and is a shrinking proportion of the DOD
S&T portfolio. While “6.2” funding has increased a little more,
recent growth in DOD S&T has come predominantly from growth in “6.3”
funding of advanced technology development rather than from research,
a trend the House Defense bill would continue with a larger percentage
increase for “6.3” than for “6.1” or “6.2”.
Figure 2. (click
on the image to view or download a color, full-size PDF version of the
chart)
R&D in the Navy, the Air
Force, and the Defense Agencies would all increase (see Table
B), with most of the increases going to weapons development activities.
Army R&D would fall in the House bill as a result of the Army’s
revised FY 2005 request in March which sliced $1.2 billion in development
funds from what the Army had originally requested in February. The House
appropriators would follow the Army’s lead in removing these funds from
the FY 2005 totals.
R&D in the
Defense Agencies would increase $1.6 billion to $20.5 billion in the
House appropriation, primarily because of a $905 million increase to
$8.5 billion for development in the Missile Defense Agency (MDA; see
Table B). The missile defense program is a high priority for the Bush Administration.
While the House would provide substantially less than the $9.1 billion
MDA requested, the appropriation would still be an 11.9 percent increase
over FY 2004. The MDA (formerly the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization)
no longer funds research; there would be some funds for technology development
but now nearly all missile defense funds go to advanced development,
testing, manufacturing development, and evaluation of missile defense
systems. Including procurement funds in other parts of the DOD budget,
the House would provide $9.5 billion for ballistic missile defense programs,
which are slated for initial deployment in September (this fall).
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) would see its R&D
funding increase substantially by 9.6 percent in the House to $3.1
billion. Although House authorizers found the $3.1 billion DARPA request
excessive, House appropriators would actually add slightly to the request.
The House support for DARPA programs stands in contrast to the sharp
congressional criticism DARPA attracted last year.
Last year, DARPA’s Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) project to engage
in R&D on creating better systems and networks to analyze, process,
and find patterns in intelligence and other data, attracted considerable
public and congressional criticism based on worries that the project
could provide the military with unprecedented capabilities to monitor
personal information. The FY 2004 DOD budget bill terminated the TIA
project, eliminated TIA’s home in DARPA’s Information
Awareness Office, and instructed DARPA to distribute the Office’s other
programs among the other 7 DARPA offices. The FY 2005 defense authorization
bills and now the FY 2005 Defense bill contain no such terminations
or criticisms.
Outlook for
Defense R&D
The House Defense
bill would add to the Pentagon’s FY 2005 request, but would not alter
the long-term outlook for DOD’s research programs. The Pentagon’s five-year
budget plan calls for the total DOD budget to increase from $402 billion
in FY 2005 up to $488 billion in FY 2009, though these budgets exclude
any costs associated with the occupation of Iraq. The AAAS analysis
of the Pentagon projections show that total DOD R&D would increase
in line with inflation and end up at $71.1 billion by FY 2009.
But the Pentagon’s five-year budget projections call for sharp cuts in
DOD’s support of S&T, including DOD support of basic and applied
research (see Figure 3). Total DOD S&T would fall from $12.6
billion this year down to $10.5 billion in FY 2006 before edging up
slightly to $11.2 billion by FY 2009, for a cut of 17.9 percent after
inflation between FY 2004 and 2009. DOD S&T would fall further and
further away from the 3 percent goal and end up at 2.3 percent of the
total DOD budget by FY 2009 in the DOD projections. DOD support of basic
research would fall 17 percent after inflation over the next five years,
while DOD applied research would fall by 11 percent (see Figure 3).
The steepest cuts are projected to take place over the next two years,
with some recovery after that. While the cuts would still leave “6.2”
and “6.3” funding somewhat above recent historical levels, they would
leave “6.1” funding on a steady downward trend from the past decade.
The House appropriation,
of course, would alter the Pentagon projections for FY 2005 by turning
requested cuts in “6.1” and “6.2” to appropriated increases. It remains
to be seen whether Congress will continue to find the dollars to alter
the Pentagon’s projected course for research funding.
Figure 3. (click
on the image to view or download a color, full-size PDF version of the
chart)
The House Defense bill now awaits
a companion bill from the Senate. The Senate version of the bill (S 2559) may
be on the Senate floor later this week (the AAAS R&D Funding Update on
Senate appropriations for DOD R&D will be available shortly). The two
versions of the bill have similar funding levels for programs with few
controversial legislative provisions, and emergency funds for Iraq that
lawmakers would like DOD to have as soon as possible, so the House-Senate
conference should be easy, making the Defense bill a strong candidate to be one
of only two or three appropriations bills to be signed into law before the
October 1 start of FY 2005.
- June 23, 2004
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates
on the FY 2005 congressional appropriations process. This analysis
includes information on R&D in House aappropriations for the Department
of Defense. The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including
continually updated analyses of R&D by agency in FY 2005 appropriations,
is available on the AAAS R&D
Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2005 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
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
