Highlights
- The House would provide $73.6 billion for R&D in the Department of
Defense (DOD), $2.1 billion more than the current year for a 2.9
percent increase in contrast to a requested cut (see Table
A). 96 percent of the increase would go to development programs.
- The House
would add $2.8 billion to the request for DOD
“Science and Technology” (S&T) programs for a total of $13.5 billion
(see Table C).
S&T, which includes research, medical research, and technology
development, would have declined 22 percent in the Pentagon request, but the House would
bring S&T funding to 3.2 percent of the total DOD budget at a level
nearly even with this year.
- Most DOD services and agencies would gain substantially from House appropriations.
The Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) budget would increase 4.2 percent to $3.1 billion,
while the Chemical and Biological Defense Program (CBDP) would see its
budget surge 52 percent to $1.1 billion (see Table
B). The Missile Defense Agency, however, would lose $1.2 billion
in funding down to $7.6 billion.
- The House would add funds for DOD support of basic and applied research, much of it in the form of earmarks. Basic
research (“6.1”) would fall 4.0 percent to $1.5 billion, an improvement
over the Pentagon’s 13 percent proposed cut (see Table
A). Applied research (“6.2”) would gain 4.2 percent to $5.1 billion,
again despite steep cuts in the Pentagon request.
DOD R&D in FY 2006 House Appropriations
On June 7, the
House Appropriations Committee drafted its version of the FY 2006 Defense
appropriations bill (HR 2863), which funds most of the Department of
Defense (DOD). The Military Quality of Life bill (HR 2528), approved
by the full House on May 26, funds the remainder
of DOD. Together, the bills would provide $417 billion for the regular
DOD budget in FY 2006.
The Pentagon
is presiding over a record-breaking budget of close to $500 billion
this year. DOD’s budget is at record levels, of course, because of the
continuing deployment of U.S. forces during the occupation and reconstruction
of Iraq and Afghanistan; just last month, DOD gained another $74 billion
in FY 2005 emergency funding outside its regular budget to pay for this
year’s occupation costs. The FY 2006 DOD budget request appears to be
a sharp drop to $420 billion, but the FY 2006 request leaves out entirely
the future costs of the U.S.
presence in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
Even the Pentagon itself acknowledges that U.S.
troops will be in Iraq
at current strengths at least through the end of 2006, but President
Bush has refused to include Iraq
costs in his last few budgets. These additional funds have been provided
in emergency supplemental appropriations bills outside the regular DOD
budget, as they were last month, but the House Defense bill gets a head
start on next year by providing $45 billion in emergency funds outside
the regular DOD budget but in a different section of the same bill for
6 months’ worth of ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The
emergency section of the House Defense bill contains $88 million in
development funding for FY 2006; the FY 2005 emergency supplemental
contained $637 million in FY 2005 development funding. All figures in
the tables and in this analysis include supplementals,
and thus the FY 2005 figures in this analysis differ from FY 2005 estimates
in AAAS Report XXX: R&D FY 2006,
which was published before the May supplemental.)
The House
Defense bill would provide a record-breaking $73.6 billion for DOD R&D
in FY 2006, a substantial increase of $2.1 billion or 2.9 percent
over the previous record of $71.6 billion this year (see Table
A). While the Pentagon requested a cut in DOD R&D, the House
would reshuffle DOD priorities and provide increases to a broad range
of R&D programs offset by cuts in other DOD accounts as well as
funding shifts from the regular DOD budget to emergency funding. (For
details of the President’s request for DOD R&D, please see Chapter
6 of AAAS Report XXX: R&D
FY 2006 or the February 23 DOD
R&D Funding Update). The DOD request would have been
the first real cut in DOD’s R&D since 1996 after four years of record-setting
R&D investments that exceed previous Cold War highs (see Figure
1), but the House would extend the gains for a fifth year.
Although 96
percent of the House increase would go to development programs, DOD
support of basic and applied research would do far better in the House
than in the request. DOD’s “6.1” (basic research) and “6.2” (applied
research) activities combined would gain 2.2 percent to $6.5 billion,
a $1 billion improvement over a 14 percent requested cut (see Table
A). In real terms, the proposed cut would have reversed six years of
increases and left DOD research support at 2000 funding levels, but
the House increase would enable DOD support to stay just ahead of expected
inflation.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
Basic research funding (the “6.1” category) would fall 4.0 percent to
$1.5 billion, reversing an 11 percent increase last year, but the House
would add funds to many “6.1” accounts to improve on a 13 percent requested
cut. Table C shows that basic research in
the Army, Navy, and Air Force would decline in the House plan, though by less
than the request. Basic research funding in the Defense Agencies, however,
would increase dramatically by 9.3 percent to $269 million, mostly because of a
near-doubling of the basic research portfolio of the Chemical and Biological
Defense Program (CBDP) to $73 million. Funding for the University Research
Initiatives program would fall 8 percent down to $271 million despite House
additions to the request in the form of earmarks. URI competitively awards
basic research grants to university performers and is funded by the three
services. The Defense Research Sciences program, which primarily funds in-house
research but also awards external grants, would receive a combined $904 million
in FY 2006, a cut of 6 percent. One area due for increased funding is the new
National Defense Education Program (NDEP), started this year in the Office of
the Secretary of Defense (OSD) with $3 million and increasing to $10 million
next year in both the request and the House appropriation.
Applied research funding (the “6.2” category) would gain 4.2 percent in
the House plan to $5.1 billion in FY 2006 instead of a 15 percent requested
cut. The House would moderate
steep requested cuts to applied research programs in the three services,
mostly through the addition of earmarks, and would add to a requested
increase for the Defense Agencies, especially for DARPA (see DARPA below).
The House would provide $444 million for congressionally
designated medical research programs in FY 2006 (see Table
A) in the Defense Health Program, outside the regular RDT&E
accounts and funded in the Military Quality of Life appropriations bill
for the first time this year. Included in the total would be $210 million
combined for breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer research through peer-reviewed,
competitively awarded grants (down slightly from the current year total).
Over the years, the DOD program has become a major force in cancer research;
NIH spending on these cancers, for example, is estimated at $1.2 billion
annually. Most of the remaining appropriation would go to earmarked
research projects on medical topics. In addition, there is nearly $500
million in the Army R&D appropriation for earmarked medical R&D
projects in “6.2” and “6.3” accounts.
Figure 2. (click
on the image for PDF)
DOD funding of “S&T” (the “6.1” through “6.3” categories plus
medical research) would total
$13.5 billion in FY 2006, a slight dip from $13.6 billion this year
(see Table C). For the past several
years, Congress has been far more supportive of S&T funding than
the Pentagon, and so far the pattern holds true for the FY 2006 budget.
The House appropriation would be $2.8 billion more than the $10.7 billion
DOD request, which would amount to a 22 percent cut. 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 four budgets, including this year’s, have met that
goal after taking out Iraq
and Afghanistan
war spending. The FY 2006 request, however, would cut S&T funding
steeply, lowering the S&T/budget ratio to 2.54 percent; the House
bill would boost the ratio to 3.2 percent, excluding emergency Iraq
funding.
The House appropriation would keep DOD S&T near its record-high 2005
funding level. DOD S&T has increased in recent years after hitting
post-Cold War lows in the late 1990s, though it took nearly two decades
for S&T funding to return to mid-1980s levels (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 that has many DOD S&T advocates calling for
at least 20 percent of S&T funding to be devoted to basic research
instead of just over 10 percent currently.
On the development
side, there would be mixed news for DOD’s big-ticket weapons development
programs. The largest single development project in DOD, and indeed
the entire federal budget, would once again be the Joint Strike Fighter
(JSF), funded by the Navy and Air Force together at a development cost
of $4.9 billion, up from $4.3 billion this year as the fighter plane
nears production. In a sign of how expensive weapons development can
be, the JSF project alone would be more than the entire R&D portfolio
of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The House would take $450
million from the request for the Armored Systems Modernization project,
but this would still allow funding to climb from $2.3 billion to $2.6
billion. But there would be steep cuts in development funding for several
projects making up the national missile defense system in the Missile
Defense Agency (MDA; see below). And some programs would see their development
funding fall: the Navy’s DD(X) Destroyer would receive $670 million
in FY 2006 for development, down from $1.2 billion because of House
concerns about the readiness of the technology for this program.
After several
years of large increases, R&D in the Defense Agencies would fall
$1.1 billion or 5.5 percent to $19.6 billion, primarily because of a
$1.2 billion or 13.7 percent cut to $7.6 billion for development in
the Missile Defense Agency (MDA; see Table
B). Although missile defense
systems have begun to be deployed in Alaska, the development effort would slow in FY
2006, and the House would take an additional $148 million from
the request on top of a $1.1 billion requested cut. The MDA (formerly
the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization) no longer funds research;
nearly all missile defense funds go to advanced development, testing,
manufacturing development, and evaluation of missile defense systems.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) would see its R&D
funding increase to $3.1 billion in FY 2006, an increase of $125
million or 4.2 percent (see Table B), after
similar increases in the last three years. DARPA is research-oriented
(51 percent of its budget is for research, with the remainder devoted
to “6.3” technology development), and its broad research portfolio is
aimed at expanding the frontiers of knowledge and military technology
to provide future solutions to DOD’s technology needs. DARPA’s efforts in areas such as tactical technology, materials,
aerospace systems, network-centric warfare, information and communications
technology, and cognitive computing would all receive increases, while
there would be cuts in DARPA support of electronics technology, biological
warfare defense, sensors, and guidance technology.
Among the other Defense Agencies, the big winner would be the Chemical and
Biological Defense Program (CBDP), with a 52 percent increase for its
R&D to $1.1 billion in the House Defense bill. CBDP funds chemical
and biological defense R&D at all stages from basic research through
testing and evaluation of new technologies; most categories would receive
large increases in FY 2006, especially basic research with an 88 percent
boost to $73 million and applied research (up 50 percent to $251 million).
But R&D in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) would fall
nearly 14 percent to $2.1 billion, despite significant add-ons in the
House bill. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), after a large
increase in 2005, would see its R&D funding fall 8 percent down
to $421 million. Most of the cuts would come from DTRA’s applied research programs oriented toward weapons of
mass destruction (see Table B).
Outlook
for Defense R&D
The FY 2006 DOD
budget is unusual in that total defense spending (excluding Iraq
costs) in FY 2006 would increase only modestly, compared to enormous
gains in each of the past several years. The overall FY 2006 budget
continues the austerity in domestic spending that hit many R&D funding
agencies in 2005, but would extend it to defense spending as well. The
apparent flattening of defense spending is partly due to the Pentagon’s
decision to load more and more of what normally would be regular defense
spending into emergency supplemental requests, taking these costs out
of the budget request. The growing size of these supplementals,
such as the $74 billion approved in May for FY 2005 and the $45 billion
included in the House Defense bill for just a few months’ worth of emergency
spending next year, means that total DOD spending continues to set new
records even as the regular DOD budget appears to be austere.
The House appropriation
for DOD R&D, combined with defense-related R&D funded by the
Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
brings total federal defense R&D to a new record of $78.0 billion
in FY 2006 (see Table D and Figure 1),
a 2.5 percent boost over the current record funding level of $76 billion
this year. U.S.
spending on defense R&D exceeds defense R&D in every other nation
combined, and the gap between the U.S.
and the rest of the world would further widen in the FY 2006 appropriations
bills drafted so far. Among major U.S.
allies, only the United Kingdom
and France
invest large proportions of their government R&D portfolios on defense,
though nowhere near the majority share that defense R&D holds in
the U.S.
federal R&D portfolio.
The House Defense
bill goes to the full House for debate and approval the week of June
20. The Senate Appropriations Committee may draft its version of the
bill within the next few weeks. The pressing need for emergency funds
in Iraq
and Afghanistan
makes 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 2006.
- June 16, 2005
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D
Funding Updates on FY 2006 congressional appropriations. The complete
series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated
analyses of R&D in FY 2006 appropriations, is available on the
AAAS R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd)
in the "FY 2006 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
AAAS R&D
Web site: www.aaas.org/spp/rd
