- The Senate has approved a $69.5 billion R&D budget in FY 2005 for
the Department of Defense (DOD), $3.6 billion more than the current
year for a 5.4 percent increase, and $388 million more than the House
approved a few days earlier (see Table A).
98 percent of the Senate increase would go to development programs.
- The House, Senate, and the Pentagon all agree on large increases for missile
defense. The Senate would devote $9.0 billion (up 18 percent) to
development in the Missile Defense Agency in FY 2005,
in preparation for initial deployment of missile defenses later this
year (see Table B).
- Both the House and Senate appropriators would break with the Pentagon
by adding funds for DOD support of basic
and applied research. In the Senate, basic research (“6.1”) would
gain 4.6 percent to $1.5 billion, similar to a House-approved increase
(see Table A). Applied research (“6.2”)
would gain 2.1 percent to $4.5 billion, again similar to the House increase.
The Pentagon request would cut both.
- DOD “Science and Technology” (S&T) would decline slightly to $12.5
billion in the Senate plan, while the House would increase it by 3.5
percent to $13.0 billion. S&T, which includes research, medical
research, and technology development, would
exceed 3 percent of the total DOD budget in both the House and Senate
plans (see Table C).
On June
24, the Senate approved a $416 billion FY 2005 Defense appropriations
bill (S 2559) that would provide record-breaking sums for Department
of Defense (DOD) R&D, two days after the House approved a similar
bill (HR 4613). The Defense bill, the first of the 13 FY 2005 appropriations
bills to pass both the House and the Senate, 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 Senate bill, like 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, in the Senate
case by more than $500 million. All figures in the tables and in this
analysis have been reduced to reflect the across-the-board reductions.
(For details of R&D in the FY 2005 DOD request, see the February
20 AAAS R&D Funding Update; for details of House and Senate
authorizations for DOD R&D in FY 2005, see the June
2 AAAS R&D Funding Update; for details of House appropriations
for DOD R&D in FY 2005, see the June 23 AAAS
R&D Funding Update.)
Priorities in
DOD R&D
Just a few days after the House approved the largest DOD R&D budget
in history of $69.2 billion, the Senate raised
the ante with an even larger $69.5 billion R&D appropriation for
DOD, an increase of 5.5 percent or $3.6 billion, following substantial
increases in each of the past four years. Fully 98 percent of the Senate
increase would go to development programs. Of the $3.6 billion increase,
only a net $70 million would go to basic and applied research.
Even the modest
dollar increases for research would be an improvement over requested
cuts. DOD support
of basic and applied research would
increase in FY 2005 under both the House and Senate plans. 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. 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. The Senate would provide a slightly smaller increase of 2.7 percent.
Basic research funding (the “6.1” category) would rise $64 million to
$1.5 billion in the Senate appropriation, nearly the same as the House,
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 Senate would continue URI in the three services
at a combined level of $302 million, up $19 million from the FY 2004
funding level and slightly above the House. The broader Defense Research
Sciences programs, which fund basic research at DOD laboratories, universities,
and other performers, would collectively total $928 million in the Senate
plan, up substantially from $884 million in FY 2004.
The Senate
would provide $399 million for congressionally
designated medical research programs in FY 2005 (see Table
A) in the Defense Health Program, outside the regular RDT&E
accounts, compared to $446 million in the House. The Senate would allocate
$200 million for peer reviewed research on cancer and $50 million for
peer reviewed research on other medical topics; the House would stick
with the current program of $150 million for breast cancer, $85 million
for prostate cancer, and $10 million for ovarian cancer. Most of the
remaining House and Senate medical appropriations would go to earmarked
projects.
Figure 1. (click
on the image to view or download a color, full-size PDF version of the
chart)
The Senate would cut DOD funding of “S&T” (the “6.1” through “6.3”
categories plus medical research) slightly
to $12.5 billion in FY 2005, $88 million less than this year (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 approved a generous boost to $13.0
billion, and while the Senate would fall short of that mark its appropriation
would still be $1.9 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 (excluding 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, while the lower Senate appropriation
would be 3.10 percent of the DOD budget.
The House and Senate appropriations indicate that DOD S&T could reach
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, DOD S&T has increased in recent years after hitting
post-Cold War lows in the late 1990s (see Figure 1). The House appropriation
would carry DOD S&T to a level not seen since the Cold War, while
the Senate would fall slightly short. While this is a relief for DOD
S&T advocates, Figure 1 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.
R&D in the
Defense Agencies would increase $1.2 billion to $20.1 billion in the
Senate appropriation, entirely due to a $1.4 billion increase to $9.0
billion for development in the Missile Defense Agency, a large boost
of 18.4 percent (MDA; see Table B). The missile defense program is a high priority for the Bush Administration.
While the large Senate increase would still be less than the $9.1 billion
MDA requested, it would be more than the $8.5 billion House appropriation.
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. Initial deployment in Alaska
and California of missile
defense systems could begin in September (this fall).
The Senate and
the House are in disagreement over funding for the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with the Senate cutting DARPA
and the House providing a large increase. The Senate Defense bill
would give DARPA $2.8 billion in FY 2005, 1.0 percent less than this
year and far less than the $3.1 billion both the Pentagon and the House
would give. While the Senate cut would actually apply only to classified
programs, the Senate Defense bill criticizes several DARPA unclassified
programs for being too large. But instead of cutting funding, the Senate
would split four large programs into eight smaller ones to give each
new program a smaller research focus area; the combined budgets would
be roughly equal to current-year funding. The House would keep the current
program structure.
Outlook for Defense R&D
The House and Senate
Defense bills 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 2). 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 2).
The House and Senate
appropriations, 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 2. (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 29, 2004
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates
on the FY 2005 appropriations process. This analysis includes information
on R&D in Senate appropriations 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
