Fiscal Year 2005 R&D Budget: Wrap-up
 Homeland Security funds continued to surge, Defense
recovers lost ground after decade of stagnant funding,
other R&D funding remains flat.
Driven by large increases in defense and homeland security, the FY 05 budget included a record level $132.2 billion for Federal investment in research and development. This was the ninth year in a row for real increases in the Federal R&D investment.
Defense R&D: The total FY 05 Federal R&D budget was $6 billion higher than FY 04; although 80 percent of the increase went for new weapons development, helping push the Defense Department’s R&D budget to its biggest in history, $71 billion.
Homeland Security R&D: Compared to tight-fisted treatment for most civilian R&D, homeland security emerged as the big winner, with a $4.1 billion R&D investment that spans both defense and non-defense agencies. Significantly, R&D at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) garnered a whopping 20 percent increase or $206million, raising the DHS R&D investment to $1.2 billion. This increase follows a $300 million increase the previous year. Most of these funds were for developing technologies for near-term deployment in the war on terrorism.
FY 05 continued the trend of flat budgets for many important R&D programs. While the doubling of the NIH budget and the addition of substantial sums for homeland security pushed non-defense R&D to new highs, all other non-defense R&D budgets—including research in the physical sciences, environmental sciences, engineering, mathematics, and computer sciences—have remained flat for more than a decade.
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and how they may affect your organization, please contact
us at info@techvision21.com or
(202) 263-0168.
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