Despite military downsizing , the White House has antecedently shielded science research at the Department of Defense from budget cut . But this yr , the administration requested a 6.9 % reduction . That has university worried since they receive 10 % of their federal research funding from the Pentagon .
Intestimonybefore Congress this preceding March , Alan Shaffer , the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering , estimated that this budget reduction “ will cut about 1,500 [ academic ] Ulysses S. Grant across the nation , give or take . ”
Academic mental hospital had hoped that Congress might touch on at least part of this funding . But , yesterday , the House Appropriations Committee passed a bill that largely adhered to the organization ’s budget , with only a slight step-down , from 6.9 % to 6.4 % .
The Association of American Universities was ready torespond :
We are demoralize by the House Appropriations Committee ’s Defense banker’s bill … The canonical research DOD has conducted since World War II has systematically made our nation ’s war machine the earth ’s best equipped , most technologically advanced military force . DOD basic research has led to engineering science rate from radar to GPS , from the optical maser to stealth technology . Congress should okay this sort of cut only if it bid to erode our armed forces ’ next technological vantage . We recognize that the damaging spending caps and sequestration enforce by the Budget Control Act have put force per unit area on every surface area of discretional disbursal . But the fact is that basic research is a very small , but life-sustaining , part of the Defense budget . Sustaining expenditure for this critical inquiry priority would have very little impact on the rest of the Defense budget . We advocate the full House and the Senate to override this inauspicious natural action .
As Science Insiderreports , academic scientist get about one - half of the roughly $ 2 billion the Pentagon spends on basic research , screw as the “ 6.1 ” budget line in Department of Defense parlance . Overall , the U.S. military provides about one - one-half of the research financing in many technology fields , one - third in computer science , and one - fifth in mathematics and physics .
But in histestimony , Shaffer told Congress that , in the look of severe budget cutting , the Pentagon will more and more bear on its money into apply science projects that are closer to fruition and rely more on R&D that ’s fall out of the commercial-grade sector :
Most of U.S. canonical research is conducted at universities and colleges and funded by the federal government activity . However , the largest share of U.S. total R&D is maturation , which is largely perform by the business sector . The business sector also perform the majority of applied inquiry .
This imply that DoD require to be more cognizant of industry R&D as part of our overall capability growth and stay raw to the importance of federally funded academic inquiry … .We already know that industry drives most microelectronics and semiconducting material development ; older infrared focal planes , routine communication , computing machine . The technology amount from these sectors is sufficient to contact most DoD potentiality needs . The DoD should be an adopter , not a leader in these areas .
Congress wo n’t make a final decision on the outlay bill until after the November election . But Shaffer has warn that financing will be under like stress in financial years 2016 , 2017 , and 2018 because of overall constraint impose by the Budget Control Act .
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