Highlights (updated October 13; updates in [ ]
)
- The Senate would provide $72.4 billion for R&D in the Department of
Defense (DOD) in fiscal year (FY) 2006, nearly $1 billion more than
in 2005 for a 1.2 percent increase in contrast to a requested cut (see
Table A). The entire increase would go to
development programs. The House would provide slightly more than the
Senate.
- The Senate joins the House
in rejecting steep requested cuts to DOD’s “Science
and Technology” (S&T) programs for a total of $12.7 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 Senate cut
would be 7 percent. The Senate action would bring S&T funding to
3.15 percent of the regular DOD budget.
- The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) budget would fall
1.8 percent to $2.9 billion because of Senate concerns over the military
relevance of its portfolio. The Missile Defense Agency would lose nearly
$1 billion in funding down to $7.9 billion, but the Chemical and Biological
Defense Program (CBDP) would see its budget surge 39 percent to $994
million (see Table B).
- Congress is poised to
add funds to the request for DOD
support of basic and applied research, much of it in
the form of earmarks, but would still leave funding below FY 2005 levels.
The Senate would provide $1.4 billion for basic research (“6.1”),
a 4.5 percent cut but an improvement over the Pentagon’s 13 percent
proposed cut (see Table A). Applied research
(“6.2”) would fall 0.3 percent to $4.8 billion, again an improvement
over steep cuts in the Pentagon request. The House would provide similar
funding levels for both “6.1” and “6.2” programs.
DOD R&D in FY 2006 Senate Appropriations: Senate Moderates Proposed
Cuts to Research
[On October 7, the full
Senate approved its version of the FY 2006 Defense appropriations bill
(HR 2863), which funds most of the Department of Defense (DOD), three
months after the House approved its version.] The DOD budget will not
be final in time for the October 1 start of FY 2006, but the Senate
action brings DOD closer to a final budget, perhaps later in October.
The Pentagon is presiding
over a record-breaking budget of close to $500 billion in FY 2005. 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.
The Senate Defense bill provides $390 billion for DOD’s regular budget
in FY 2006 but also provides $50 billion in additional emergency funds
for 6 months’ worth of ongoing Iraq
and Afghanistan
operations to bring the grand total of the bill to $440 billion. (Adding
in DOD funding provided in the Military Construction bill and expected
emergency funding for the latter half of FY 2006 would bring DOD’s total
FY 2006 budget well above $500 billion.) (The emergency section of the
Senate Defense bill contains $92 million in development funding for
FY 2006. All figures in the tables and in this analysis include FY 2005
and FY 2006 emergency 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 FY
2005 supplemental.)
The Senate Defense bill
would provide a record-breaking $72.4 billion for DOD R&D in FY
2006, a substantial increase of $882 million or 1.2 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 Senate
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. For details of House appropriations for
DOD, see the June 16 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. The Senate increase would fall just short
of the expected rate of inflation.
Figure
1. (click on the
image for PDF)
Basic research funding (the “6.1” category) would fall 4.5 percent to
$1.4 billion, reversing an 11 percent increase last year, but the
Senate would improve on a 13 percent requested cut. [During
floor debate, the Senate approved an amendment to designate an additional
$40 million for selected "6.1" programs, but did not provide
additional funds, leaving open the likelihood that the designated funds
could come from other "6.1" programs.] Table C shows
that basic research in the Army, Navy, and Air Force would decline in
both the House and Senate plans, though by less than the request. [After
the floor amendment, funding for the University Research Initiatives
program would be boosted $25 million from the original bill up to $293
million, nearly even with FY 2005.] 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 $916
million in FY 2006, a cut of 5 percent. The new National Defense Education
Program (NDEP), started this year in the Office of the Secretary of
Defense (OSD) with $3 million, would climb to $10 million next year
in the request and both the House and original Senate appropriations,
but the Senate floor amendment would boost it further to $20 million.]
The program funds scholarships and fellowships to students in defense-critical
fields of science, mathematics, engineering, and languages in return
for a commitment to a term of national service.
Applied research funding (the “6.2” category) would fall 0.5 percent in
the Senate plan to $4.8 billion in FY 2006 instead of a 15 percent requested
cut; the House would increase “6.2” funding. The Senate would moderate steep requested cuts to applied research programs
in the three services, mostly through the addition of earmarks, and
would trim a requested increase for applied research in the Defense
Agencies.
The Senate would
provide $516 million for congressionally
designated medical research programs in FY 2006 (see Table
A) in the Defense Health Program, outside the regular RDT&E
accounts. Included in the total would be $245 million combined for competitively
awarded cancer research grants, the same as FY 2005, split into $150
million for breast cancer, $85 million for prostate cancer, and $10
million for ovarian cancer. There would be an additional $50 million
for competitive medical research on other topics. The House would provide
slightly less than the Senate. Over the years, the DOD program has become
a major force in cancer research; the National Institutes of Health
(NIH), the major source for federal support of cancer research, spends
an estimated $1.2 billion annually on these cancers. Most of the remaining
appropriation would go to earmarked research projects on medical topics.
In addition, there is nearly $200 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
$12.7 billion in FY 2006, a sharp drop from $13.6 billion this year
but nearly $2 billion more than the 22 percent cut the Pentagon requested
(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 would go even higher with a $2.6 billion boost to the request
to bring S&T funding nearly even with FY 2005. 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 FY 2005, have met that
goal after taking out Iraq
and Afghanistan
war spending. The FY 2006 request, however, would have cut S&T funding
steeply, lowering the S&T/budget ratio to 2.54 percent; the Senate
bill would boost the ratio to 3.15 percent, excluding emergency funding,
and the House would go even higher to 3.2 percent.
Both the House and Senate appropriations 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 prompted 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. [In response,
the full Senate approved a floor amendment calling for DOD to set a
goal of 15 percent of S&T for basic research.]
On the development side, there would
be mixed news for DOD’s big-ticket weapons development programs. Overall
development funding would increase, but there would be cuts to some
big-ticket programs. The largest single development project in DOD,
and indeed the entire federal development portfolio, would once again
be the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), funded by the Navy and Air Force
together at a development cost of $4.6 billion, up from $4.3 billion
this year as the fighter plane nears production but well below the nearly
$5 billion request. 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 Senate would cut a major
satellite communications development program by nearly a third, would
trim the request for space-based radar development by a third, and would
nearly eliminate a $250 million radio system project. And missile defense
development would sustain a nearly $1 billion cut (see below).
After several years of large increases,
R&D in the Defense Agencies would fall $1.4 billion or 6.9 percent
to $19.3 billion, primarily because of a $918 million or 10.4 percent
cut to $7.9 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. 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 fall 1.8 percent to $2.9 billion, in contrast to Pentagon and
House increases (see Table B). 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. The Senate would trim DARPA’s efforts
out of concern that many of its programs may have only marginal impacts
on present and future military needs. The report language accompanying
the bill urges DARPA to focus closely on programs offering the greatest
potential benefit for the military. The House apparently does not share
these concerns, so DARPA’s budget will now
be decided in conference.
Among the other Defense Agencies, the big winner would be the Chemical and
Biological Defense Program (CBDP), with a 39 percent increase for its
R&D to $1.0 billion. 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 a 54 percent boost to $84 million.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), after a large increase in
2005, would see its R&D funding fall 8 percent down to $420 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 Senate 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 $76.9 billion in FY 2006 (see
Table D and Figure 1), a 1.2 percent boost
over the current record funding level of $76.0 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 Senate approved the
Defense bill on October 7 by a unanimous vote of 97-0. The urgent need
to replenish depleted Iraq and Afghanistan funds is expected to make
the House-Senate conference move quickly. One possible delay was defused
on the Senate floor, when an amendment to attached the unfinished Defense
authorization bill (a defense policy bill that is usually enacted before
the appropriations bill) failed. Senate
authorizers pushed for the amendment because the Senate version of the
authorization bill has been stuck on the Senate floor since July, but
appropriators prevailed in their wish to keep the bills separate.] Until
the bill is signed into law, DOD programs will be operating at the lowest
of FY 2005, House-proposed, or Senate-proposed funding levels under
a continuing resolution (CR; a temporary appropriations bill) through
November 18.
- September 30, 2005 (updated October 13)
(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
