House Appropriators Recommend 10.4% Increase in FY 2004 DOD S&T

Yesterday the House Appropriations Committee passed the FY 2004 Defense Appropriations bill with a budget increase of 10.4% over the current year for the Defense Department’s science and technology programs. While the accompanying committee report has not yet been published, science and technology funding figures are available.

House appropriators continue to give defense science and technology programs a high priority. The bill House appropriators approved yesterday reduced total funding for the overall bill by about $3 billion from the Administration’s request, but increased S&T spending by 16.2% over the President’s request. It is also of note that the committee allocated 3.2% of the bill’s total funding to the S&T program. This percentage, the same percentage that was appropriated in last year’s bill by the committee, surpasses the 3.0% target recommended by the Defense Science Board and the Quadrennial Defense Review. The committee’s S&T appropriation is also higher than that recommended by the Coalition for National Security Research, to which AIP and several of its Member Societies belong (see http://cnsr.org/ ); the below figures were provided by the coalition.

The percentage and dollar figures below are for the changes in the three S&T programs between the current year and the FY 2004 proposed budgets. Figures are provided in the aggregate, for the three branches and Defense-Wide programs. The “Defense-Wide"category is not total spending, but rather spending for DARPA, missile defense, and other defense labs. It is important to note that some of the research that is now conducted and funded under the Defense-Wide category would be shifted to the three service branches in FY 2004; thus the first set of figures provides the clearest picture of the overall changes in the bill.

AGGREGATE 6.1 (basic research) funding would increase 1.1%
AGGREGATE 6.2 (applied research) funding would increase 2.2%
AGGREGATE 6.3 (advanced technology development) funding would increase 20.0%
TOTAL AGGREGATE 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 funding would increase 10.4%, from $10,772 million to $11,891 million

ARMY 6.1 funding would increase 54.1%
ARMY 6.2 funding would increase 18.2%
ARMY 6.3 funding would increase 10.2%
TOTAL AGGREGATE ARMY 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 funding would increase 18.4%, from $2,142 million to $2,536 million

NAVY 6.1 funding would increase 16.0%
NAVY 6.2 funding would decline 17.7%
NAVY 6.3 funding would increase 13.7%
TOTAL AGGREGATE NAVY 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 funding would increase 1.7%, from $2,031 million to $2,065 million

AIR FORCE 6.1 funding would increase 52.8%
AIR FORCE 6.2 funding would increase 8.0%
AIR FORCE 6.3 funding would increase 85.9%
TOTAL AGGREGATE AIR FORCE 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 funding would increase 44.9% from $1,751 million to $2,537 million

DEFENSE-WIDE 6.1 funding would decline 55.0%
DEFENSE-WIDE 6.2 funding would increase 0.7%
DEFENSE WIDE 6.3 funding would increase 7.6%
TOTAL AGGREGATE DEFENSE-WIDE funding would decline 2.0% from $4,848 million to $4,753 million

The Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to complete work on its version of this bill during the second week of July.