In late June, the Office
of Management and Budget (OMB) released its annual report to Congress
on combating terrorism. Included in the report is an inventory of federal
spending on counter-terrorism R&D. The Table
shows federal funding for counter-terrorism R&D from FY 2001 to
the FY 2003 request. In response to the September 11 and anthrax terrorist
attacks, there has been a dramatic increase in federal spending on counter-terrorism
R&D, especially in bioterrorism, and there would be even greater increases in
FY 2003 under the Bush Administration’s proposals. The OMB data show that the Bush Administration requested $2.9 billion
for counter-terrorism R&D in the FY 2003 budget,
a substantial 150 percent increase from the current FY 2002 funding
level, which itself was double the FY 2001 funding level (see Table).
As shown in Figure 1, counter-terrorism R&D is funded by ten different
federal agencies, with the largest being the Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS; $1.7 billion in FY 2003) and the Department of
Defense (DOD; $767 million). Both these agencies’ portfolios would expand
dramatically in the FY 2003 budget.
Figure
1. (click on image
to view or download a full-size color PDF version of this chart)
As the Table
and Figure 1 shows, counter-terrorism R&D is an interagency effort
whose priorities and scale have shifted dramatically in the past few
years. Until FY 2001, counter-terrorism R&D was an effort of about
$500 million a year with the majority of support coming from DOD because
it was assumed that U.S.
military forces were most at risk from terrorist attacks. After the
September 11 and anthrax attacks, this thinking changed dramatically
and, as a consequence, the federal counter-terrorism R&D portfolio
also changed dramatically so that nondefense
R&D agencies provide the majority of funding in FY 2002. In FY 2003,
the portfolio would shift decisively toward nondefense
R&D, and the Department of Health and Human Services (mostly its
National Institutes of Health (NIH)) would become the lead agency in
counter-terrorism R&D.
Accompanying these shifts
are dramatic increases in funding. After doubling to $1.2 billion in
FY 2002 because of increases in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA),
NIH, and Department of Transportation (DOT) funding, the portfolio would
more than double in FY 2003 to $2.9 billion, primarily because of a
nearly five-fold increase in the NIH bioterrorism
R&D portfolio.
The
National Institutes of Health (NIH) has
supported bioterrorism-related research for years, but its research
portfolio became more vital following last fall’s postal anthrax attacks.
In the FY 2002 budget, Congress quickly rushed to provide funds to ramp
up NIH’s efforts. In the FY 2003 request,
NIH would become the lead research agency in the burgeoning federal
effort to combat bioterrorism. Within NIH’s
R&D portfolio, NIH has identified $1.7 billion for bioterrorism-related
R&D and infrastructure in FY 2003, up substantially from only $275
million in FY 2002 which itself was a major boost from $50 million in
FY 2001. Most of the new funds would go to the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), whose total budget would receive
a boost of 57.3 percent to $4.0 billion as NIH’s
lead institute for bioterrorism R&D. Of the $1.7 billion NIH-wide counter-bioterrorism R&D request, roughly $1 billion would go
to research activities aimed at developing biomedical tools to detect,
prevent, and treat infection by biological agents. NIAID would also
receive $150 million in R&D facilities funds for construction of
new biosafety laboratories around the nation
and $250 million to procure anthrax vaccines.
Some
of the counter-terrorism R&D facilities funds would go to NIH
Buildings and Facilities. The new funds would further
improve NIH laboratory security ($80 million), build a new laboratory
in Fort Detrick,
Maryland, for bioterrorism
research ($105 million), and build a new laboratory on the NIH campus
to study infectious agents ($186 million). The remaining HHS R&D
funds in the Table come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), which funds bioterrorism R&D at
its own laboratories.
The
Department of Defense (DOD) would nearly
double its counter-terrorism R&D spending in FY 2003 to $767 million.
Most of this funding would come from the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA), which focuses primarily on military applications in
areas such as biological warfare defense, but its research could also
benefit civilian preparedness and response. The FY 2003 request would
establish a Center for Biological Counterterrorism at the U.S. Army
Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick,
Maryland.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has only a small dedicated bioterrorism R&D effort, but counts a portion of its R&D
activities in the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) as related to
terrorism, including biocontainment facilities
and upgrades to its laboratory network against terrorist attacks. These
security upgrades account for most of the big jump from $52 million
to $175 million in FY 2002 for USDA counter-terrorism R&D; because
most of these funds were one-time emergency appropriations, the USDA
total would fall down to $49 million in FY 2003.
Much of this R&D is performed at the Plum
Island Animal
Disease Center
off Long Island, New York.
The Department of Energy (DOE) develops counter-terrorism technologies,
and performs research on a variety of areas, including radiation detection,
research on biological threats, and chemical and biological detectors.
Most of this work is funded in DOE’s defense
activities within the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
Because of the September
11 hijackings, the Department
of Transportation (DOT) received a big boost of FY 2002 emergency
funds for aviation security R&D, bringing the DOT total to $122
million in FY 2002 from $50 million in FY 2001. In FY 2003, the loss
of the emergency funds would bring the total down to $59 million. Most
of this work on developing technologies to deter terrorist attacks on
the U.S.
transportation system, including airport security technologies, takes
place in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) but would be transferred
to the newly-created Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in
FY 2003.
Among other agencies, a new agency in the multi-agency effort
is the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA). From a small start in FY 2002 of $4 million, EPA would
invest $75 million in FY 2003 for building decontamination research.
The Department of Justice would continue,
through the National Institute of Justice, efforts to develop technologies
to aid state and local law enforcement’s counter-terrorism efforts.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) in Commerce funds R&D on cryptography and computer security.
The National Science Foundation
(NSF) funds research to combat bioterrorism
in the areas of infectious diseases and microbial genome sequencing;
these programs would increase to $27 million in FY 2003.
As the Table shows, counter-terrorism
R&D is part of a broader, $45 billion combined federal effort against
terrorism requested for FY 2003, more than double the $20 billion FY
2001 effort which itself reflects large spending increases approved
in September 2001. Most of this $45 billion effort would be transferred
from the current agencies to a proposed
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in FY 2003. The DHS proposal
is currently under consideration in Congress, with the goal of passing
legislation to create the new department by the end of September.
While DHS may have a great
deal of coordination power and control over the counter-terrorism R&D
portfolio, the actual funding of counter-terrorism R&D would, for
the most part, remain in the current federal R&D agencies. DOD,
EPA, Justice, and NSF would keep their entire portfolios. NIST, DOE,
USDA, and DOT would transfer most if not all of their counter-terrorism
R&D activities to the new DHS, but these agencies have small R&D
components within the overall portfolio. The large HHS portfolio of
$1.8 billion would transfer to the new department under the Administration
proposal, but both the House and Senate would keep this portfolio in
NIH and CDC under the latest versions of their DHS bills. The ultimate
home of these bioterrorism R&D programs
will be decided in September, but it is becoming increasingly likely
that these programs will stay where they are. (For details of the DHS
proposal and its likely impacts on science and technology and federal
R&D, please see the August 12 DHS R&D
Funding Update.)
(These data reflect emergency
supplementals for FY 2002 enacted in the immediate aftermath
of last fall’s terrorist attacks, but do not reflect FY 2003 congressional
action on the budget nor the latest FY 2002 supplemental bill enacted
earlier this month. The FY 2002 data differ substantially from January
2002 estimates by AAAS of $1.5 billion; many programs identified by
AAAS as counter-terrorism R&D emergency appropriations in the FY
2002 budget have been classified by federal agencies in the related
categories of critical infrastructure and continuity of operations funding
rather than counter-terrorism).
This analysis will be updated
as the FY 2003 appropriations process continues, to provide AAAS estimates
of counter-terrorism R&D in the final FY 2003 appropriations bills.
- August 22, 2002
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
American Association for the Advancement of Science
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
science_policy@aaas.org
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
(new URL)
