FY 2005 Defense Department Science and Technology Program Request

The Bush Administration has requested a 13.2% or $1.6 billion reduction in funding for Department of Defense science and technology programs in FY 2005. Under its request, the total budget for the 6.1 (basic research), 6.2 (applied research) and 6.3 (advanced technology development) programs would decline from $12.1 billion to $10.5 billion.

In describing the budget request at a Monday budget briefing, Undersecretary of Defense and Comptroller Dr. Dov Zakheim said only the following about the request for the three S&T programs: “Science and technology, an increase over last year’s request. Basically, in addition to what you see up there, money for basic research and applied research, those two may or may not translate into actual military capability. The National Aerospace Initiative, Hypersonic and Space Systems, the future combat system technologies, future naval capabilities, high-efficiency, light-weight power sources for our troops, and what the Joint Forces Command is doing, some emphases in general, if you will, on nanotechnology, on computers, on sensors, on propulsion systems. This is our cutting edge, and once again we’ve put more money into it.” Rather than comparing the current year’s budget to the FY 2005 request, Zakheim focused on the $0.3 billion increase from last year’s request (FY 2004) to the new FY 2005 request.

A different perspective is to compare the S&T request to the total DOD budget. The Defense Science Board recommended that 3.0% of the total budget be allocated to the S&T budget, a goal that was later included in the Quadrennial Defense Review issued in 2001. The new S&T request is 2.61%. A year ago, this number was 2.68%.

The Bush Administration proposed the following funding levels for the three science and technology programs in FY 2005, as compared to the current year figures. These numbers do not necessarily account for program changes. More detailed numbers on the S&T request can be found at http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2005/ in the R-1 section.

AGGREGATE 6.1 (basic research) funding would decline 5.3%
AGGREGATE 6.2 (applied research) funding would decline 12.3%
AGGREGATE 6.3 (advanced technology development) funding would decline 14.6%
TOTAL AGGREGATE 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 funding would decline 12.7%, from $12,081,245,000 to $10,550,350,000.

ARMY 6.1 funding would decline 16.8%
ARMY 6.2 funding would decline 37.4%
ARMY 6.3 funding would decline 32.4%
TOTAL AGGREGATE ARMY 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 funding would decline 32.1%, from $2,626,664,000 to $1,783,313,000.

NAVY 6.1 funding would decline 1.4%
NAVY 6.2 funding would decline 22.1%
NAVY 6.3 funding would decline 32.9%
TOTAL AGGREGATE NAVY 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 funding would decline 22.5%, from $2,217,112,000 to $1,718,223,000.

AIR FORCE 6.1 funding would increase 4.3%
AIR FORCE 6.2 funding would decline 12.3%
AIR FORCE 6.3 funding would decline 28.0%
TOTAL AGGREGATE AIR FORCE 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 funding would decline 17.3% from $2,320,885,000 to $1,918,674,000.

DEFENSE-WIDE 6.1 funding would decline 8.2%
DEFENSE-WIDE 6.2 funding would increase 6.4%
DEFENSE WIDE 6.3 funding would increase 3.9%
TOTAL AGGREGATE DEFENSE-WIDE funding would increase 4.3% from $4,903,780,000 to $5,113,845,000.