The Quadrennial Defense Review is due around February 6th. The following is a good article outlining the major points and themes expected.
QDR Dominated by Uncertain, Unpredictable World
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25, 2006 – The Quadrennial Defense Review, to be delivered to Congress Feb. 6, will be dominated by two words: uncertainty and unpredictability, senior defense officials said today.
***
The officials said the 2005 review discusses four major challenges. The first is threats posed by traditional foes. "This basically involved major combat ops and state versus state conflicts, and we looked at everything else as a lesser included case to be able to meet that," one official said.
In the future, irregular challenges will be more common. The official cited Iraq and Afghanistan as examples of irregular threats facing the United States, but included operations in areas such as the Horn of Africa, the Philippines and Haiti in this challenge. The enemy in this case would be within the state, but not sponsored by the state.
A third challenge is what he called a "catastrophic set of challenges." These are unacceptable blows to the United States and attacks such as Sept. 11 or Pearl Harbor. "Getting hit by a nuclear (improvised explosive device) in one of our cities would be an example of that," the official said.
The fourth is a "disruptive" challenge. "That is a challenge or threat that would come against us and neutralize the American military as a key instrument of national power," he said.
***
View the entire article by following this link: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2006/20060125_4010.html
I have created a CNSR account on del.icio.us which contains helpful links to Defense S&T resources:
http://del.icio.us/CNSR
If you have not used del.icio.us before, it is a service which allows one to share links/bookmarks and assign each link a tag or category. As you will see when you click the link above, there is a list on the right side of the page that will allow you to search for tags you are interested in.
For example, if you click on the "dod" tag, 31 items come up that are related to the DOD.
You will also see that a new "related tags" box appears on the right side. This will allow you to select related groups within that 31 item "dod" group. Note that in the "related tags" box, the tags all have a "+" in front of them. Selecting the "terrorism" tag will jump you to the page with the all 8 items on the CNSR site tagged "terrorism." Selecting the "+" will just jump you to a page that contains the 3 links that are a "terrorism" subset of the "dod" group.
That's a little confusing without seeing it, but trust me, it's a helpful tool.
Try it.
http://del.icio.us/CNSR
Please join us for our next CNSR meeting at which our guest speakers are scheduled to be Elaine McCusker and Arun Seraphin from the Senate Armed Services Committee. The meeting will take place Tuesday, January 17 at 1pm at the American Chemical Society (1155 16th Street, NW).
As was discussed at the November meeting, we are going to change the time and location of the CNSR meetings for 2006. We will be meeting on the 3rd Tuesday of the month at the American Chemical Society (1155 16th Street, NW). The meetings will take place from 1:00 -2:00 pm, right before the Energy Sciences Coalition meeting.
We would like to thank the American Chemical Society for once again opening its doors to us.
The dates should be:
January 17
February 21
March 21
April 18
May 16
June 20
July 18
August 15
September 19
October 17
November 21
December 19
If you are looking for the conference reports, both are available in the Congressional Record, but as of this morning, only the FY06 Appropriations conference report has been posted on Thomas.
The Conference Report (House Report 109-359) for FY06 Appropriation (H.R. 2863) is available here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/R?cp109:FLD010:@1(hr359)
It was signed into law on December 30th.
When it is available, the Conference Report (House Report 109-360) for FY06 Authorization (H.R. 1815) should be found here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/R?cp109:FLD010:@1(hr360)
It also looks like it will be posted on the HASC website; currently only the bill text and a conference report summary are available.
(Includes Defense S&T Information and a secret decoder ring.)
Kei Koizumi at AAAS has done his usual bang-up job in getting out the overall R&D numbers for FY06. The latest report can be found here:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/upd1205.htm
Of particular interest to us are the following three tables:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/dod06c1.pdf
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/dod06c2.pdf
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/dod06c3.pdf
They are AAAS estimates of R&D and S&T funding taking into account the 1% cut and other rescissions, including the medical research specified in the Defense Health Programs.
AAAS estimates that:
6.1 (Basic Research) accounts will be DOWN 2.9% ($44 million) from FY05, but UP 11.4% ($150 million) from the budget request;
6.2 (Applied Research) accounts will be UP 6.5% ($313 million) from FY05, and UP 24.8% ($1026 million) from the budget request; and,
6.3 (Advanced Technology Development) accounts will be DOWN 1.9% ($132 million) from FY05, but UP 30.8% ($1562 million) from the budget request.
That gives total S&T an INCREASE of 1% ($137 million) over FY05, which is a 26% increase ($2738 million) over the budget request. Because this increase is below the rate of inflation, the overall Defense S&T enterprise will see a decrease in purchasing power from FY05. This being said, S&T came out of the process much better than expected given the decreases seen in the FY06 budget request and the budget pressures seen in a time of war.
Some might wonder what the impact of earmarks are on S&T. Well, there is AAAS analysis done on that as well.
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/earm06c.htm
from the report:
- The DOD budget contains $852 million R&D earmarks, down slightly from $1 billion last year but still well above other years. The earmarks are mostly small ($10 million or less) projects, but significantly most are for research rather than development or R&D facilities construction, squeezing basic research and applied research budgets. Earmarks for “6.1” (basic research) programs total $57 million, or 4 percent of the total; “6.2” (applied research) earmarks are $228 million, also 4 percent of the total because of a large number of medical research projects; and “6.3” earmarks are $319 million or 5 percent of the total. Earmarks in the “6.4” or higher categories of DOD R&D are only $248 million, a large dollar total but only 0.4 percent of the total portfolio. Earmarks have an especially large impact on basic research because overall basic research funding declines 2.9 percent in 2006 even as earmarks nearly double, squeezing funding for core programs.