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Go to: -Table
A. DOD R&D by Program in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations -Table
B. DOD R&D by Agency in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations -Table
C. DOD "S&T" by Agency in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations -Table
D. DOE and DHS Defense R&D in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations PDF
version of this document Main
R&D in the FY 2007 Budget Page
Supplemental
Materials: "House Boosts DOD
R&D to Another Record High," AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D
in FY 2007 DOD House Appropriations "DOD
Proposes Research Cuts, Weapons Gains in Record-Setting 2007 Budget,"
AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D in the FY 2007 DOD Budget AAAS
Analysis of R&D in the FY 2007 Budget -
| Highlights -
The Senate would add slightly to the request for Department of Defense
(DOD) R&D for a total of $74.2 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2007, an increase
of nearly $1 billion or 1.3 percent over this year (see Table
A). The entire increase, however, would go to development investments,
leaving research funding in decline. -
Although the Senate would add funding to sharp requested cuts in DOD’s “Science
and Technology” (S&T) investments, S&T funding would still decline. Instead
of a greater than 20 percent requested cut, the Senate appropriation would leave
DOD S&T funding down 10.1 percent at $12.4 billion (see Table
C), with flat funding for basic research and falling funding for applied research
and technology development. -
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) would see its budget
climb in the DOD request and the House appropriation but would fall 3.4 percent
to $2.9 billion in the Senate (see Table B). -
The Air Force and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) would be the big winners
in the Senate boosts for weapons development funding. Air Force R&D would climb 8.6 percent
to $23.9 billion (see Table B), while MDA development
would surge 21.4 percent to $9.3 billion after a steep cut in 2006. DOD R&D in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations On
July 20, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its version of the FY 2007
Defense appropriations bill (HR 5631), which funds most of the Department of Defense
(DOD). In June, the full House approved its own version of the bill. DOD is investing
record amounts in the next generation of weapons; in February, Pentagon requested
$74.1 billion for DOD R&D next year, a substantial $1 billion increase after
similar increases in previous years (see Table A).
The House Defense bill would add $2 billion to the request for a record-breaking
total DOD R&D appropriation of $76.2 billion, while the Senate would stick
closer to the request with $74.2 billion, nearly $1 billion or 1.3 percent more
than the current year. The Senate appropriation would be a slight cut after adjusting
for inflation, but only because the 2006 total grew recently by nearly $1 billion.
Although supplemental appropriations normally pay for short-term needs, in May
Congress approved $62 billion in supplemental DOD appropriations for FY 2006 (the
current year), including $760 million in development funds to bring the revised
2006 DOD R&D total to $73.2 billion instead of $72.5 billion as originally
reported in February. (For details of DOD’s request for FY 2007, see Chapter
6 in AAAS Report XXXI: R&D FY 2007 or
the February 22 R&D Funding Update; for details of
House appropriations for DOD R&D, see the June 19 R&D
Funding Update.) Although physical sciences research is a top priority for the Bush Administration
on the nondefense side of the budget, in the Pentagon
request and now the Senate appropriation DOD support of research would fall in
real terms. DOD is the fifth largest federal supporter of physical sciences research,
with about a tenth of the federal total. But DOD basic research funding (the “6.1”
category) would be flat at $1.5 billion in the Senate plan, an inflation-adjusted
cut of 2 percent (see Table A). The House, on the other hand, would provide a 6 percent increase. Funding for the three-service University
Research Initiatives would receive a combined $269 million, a 1.3 percent cut.
URI competitively awards basic research grants to university performers. The Defense
Research Sciences program, funded in the three services and Defense Agencies,
would receive a combined $942 million, a slight 2.5 percent increase. The relatively
new National Defense Education Program (NDEP), founded last year to encourage
U.S. students
to pursue science and engineering degrees, would see its budget rise from $2 million
last year to $10 million in 2006 and up to $20 million next year in both the request
and the House plan, but only to $15 million in the Senate appropriation.
 Figure
1. (click on the image for PDF) Applied research funding (the “6.2” category) would fall 7.5 percent to
$4.8 billion, a steep cut though still an improvement over a requested cut of
15 percent. As usual, much of the
improvement would be due to the addition of congressional earmarks that DOD proposed
to eliminate. But the Senate would join the House in increasing funding for applied
research on medical topics. As usual,
the Senate would restore funding for congressionally designated medical
research programs that the Pentagon proposed to reduce. Medical research programs
(see Table A) in the Defense Health Program would receive $468 million in the
Senate. These programs would award $245 million combined in 2007 for breast, ovarian,
and prostate cancer research through peer-reviewed, competitively awarded grants,
up from $218 million this year. 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. There are also earmarked research projects on medical
topics, and a separate pool of $45 million for peer reviewed grants for miscellaneous
medical topics in the Senate bill. The Senate would cut DOD funding of “S&T” (the “6.1” through “6.3”
categories plus medical research) by 10 percent to $12.4 billion in FY 2007,
in contrast to nearly flat funding in the House (see Table
C and Figure 1). The Senate cut, though large, would nevertheless improve
on a greater than 20 percent cut requested by the Pentagon. For every year this
decade, Congress has been far more supportive of S&T funding than the Pentagon,
with the Pentagon proposing sharp cuts each year and Congress adding billions
of dollars in the appropriations process. Advocates of DOD S&T in the science and
engineering community argue that S&T funding is essential for building the
knowledge and technology base for future DOD needs. In the FY 2007 budget, the
House agrees by sticking to the script of boosting a declining Pentagon request,
while the Senate adds $1.2 billion to the request but still falls short. The Senate 2007 appropriation would be a dramatic retreat from record
S&T funding levels over the last two years (see Figure 1). 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.
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, a trend that has many DOD S&T advocates
worried. Recently, advocates have called for at least 20 percent of S&T funding
to be devoted to basic research. As Figure 1 shows, the Senate, by holding basic
research flat while cutting funding for the other categories, would reverse the
longstanding trendline by boosting the share of S&T devoted to basic
research, though only to 12 percent. 
Figure
2. (click on the image for PDF) As
usual, the weapons development effort is where the Senate would provide the big
gains. DOD weapons development (the non-S&T portion of DOD R&D) would
jump $2.4 billion or 4.0 percent to $61.8 billion, led by large increases for
the Air Force and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA; see Table
B). These programs, in “6.4” and higher categories in DOD’s classification
system, are devoted to engineering, development, and testing work on specific
weapons systems and are extraordinarily expensive compared to research programs.
For example, 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 the Air Force at $4.3 billion in 2007, almost matching the entire
R&D budget of the National Science Foundation. Much of the Air Force’s $1.9
billion increase would go to development of space and satellite communications,
new weapons systems, and classified development programs, continuing a trend in
recent years of large increases for the Air Force (see Figure 2). The MDA’s efforts in missile defense systems development would
receive large increases in 2007 after a cut in 2006,
rising 21.4 percent to $9.3 billion (see Figure 2). In real terms, MDA funding
has doubled since the beginning of the decade. Only the Navy would see its R&D
funding drop, by 9.4 percent to $17.1 billion, to a funding level that would still
be high in historical terms (see Figure 2). The Army’s R&D funding has flattened
out in recent years and would continue to do so in the Senate appropriation at
$11.2 billion, up just 1.1 percent. Led
by the MDA increase, R&D in the Defense Agencies would climb $889 million
or 4.5 percent to $20.6 billion (see Table B). In addition to the 21.4 percent
increase for MDA, which is entirely development, the small Defense Threat Reduction
Agency (DTRA), focused on R&D to combat weapons of mass destruction, would
see its R&D funding climb 5.2 percent to $444 million. But the other major
Defense Agencies would see their R&D funding fall. Unlike the 11 percent increase
proposed by the House, the Senate would cut funding for the research-oriented
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA), by 3 percent down to $2.9 billion. Slightly more than half of DARPA’s budget goes
to “6.1” and “6.2” activities, with the remainder devoted to “6.3” technology
development. Its broad research portfolio is aimed at expanding the frontiers
of knowledge and military technology to provide future solutions to DOD’s
technology needs. Only DARPA funding of information and computing technology (ICT),
network-centric warfare technology and guidance technology would receive significant
increases, while there would be modest increases for DARPA’s basic research program. Funding for all other DARPA
research areas would fall in areas such as tactical technology, materials, cognitive
computing, electronics technology, sensors, land warfare technology and biological
warfare defense. Among the other Defense Agencies, the Chemical and Biological Defense Program (CBDP) would lose 15 percent of
its total funding in 2007 after a large increase in 2006. Impacts of Defense R&D The
Department of Defense (DOD) is by far the largest supporter of R&D in the
federal government, accounting for more than half the total federal R&D portfolio.
Defense-related R&D is also funded by the Department of Energy (DOE), which
is responsible for maintaining the U.S.
nuclear weapons stockpile, and the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
whose primary mission is homeland defense but also performs biodefense
R&D related to military security. Combining DOD, DHS, and DOE contributions,
total federal defense R&D would be $78.6 billion in Senate appropriations
and would exceed $80 billion for the first time in FY 2007 if House appropriations
prevail (see Table D), far outdistancing the
$60 billion or so Congress is likely to allocate for nondefense
R&D. Outlook
and Next Steps The
full Senate will debate and likely approve the Defense bill this week, before
the Senate leaves for a month-long summer recess. Appropriators hope to complete
a House-Senate conference on the bill in September and send a final version to
the President before the October 1 start of the fiscal year. The Defense bill
may be the only appropriations bill to be signed into law by the beginning of
FY 2007. This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on FY 2007 congressional appropriations. The complete
series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2007 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd)
in the “FY 2007 R&D” or the “What’s
New” sections.)
-
August 2, 2006
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
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