DARPA Funding Dip

As InsideDefense.com reports today, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency would see its fiscal year 2011 appropriations cut back by nearly $126.6 million if language in the Senate Appropriations Committee's fiscal year 2012 defense appropriations bill survives conference negotiations with the House version.

According to the Senate committee's report accompanying the just-released FY-12 defense-spending bill, here are the FY-11 appropriations for DARPA:

DARPA Undistributed Rescission.................................................................. 126,589,000

DARPA Defense Research Sciences.............................................................. 1,827,000

DTRA Weapons of Mass Destruction Defeat Technologies.............................. 10,435,000

DARPA Tactical Technology .......................................................................... 10,084,000

DARPA Materials and Biological Technology .................................................. 1,000,000

DARPA Electronics Technology ........................................................................ 500,000

DTRA Counterproliferation Initiatives—Proliferation Prevention and Defeat ...... 11,950,000

DARPA Classified Programs ............................................................................ 4,000,000

DARPA Command, Control and Communications Systems............................... 3,000,000

DARPA Space Programs and Technology ........................................................ 1,000,000

DARPA Advanced Electronics Technologies..................................................... 1,000,000

DARPA Network-Centric Warfare Technology.................................................. 1,000,000

The committee's recommendation is part of an overall $2.7 billion cut of funds previously allocated to Pentagon weapons-modernization accounts, cuts that would be imposed as part of the FY-12 defense-spending bill that trims $9 billion from the Obama administration's request for new weapons spending.

Here is the report language for DARPA's FY-12 budget:

The fiscal year 2012 budget request includes approximately $3,000,000,000 for DARPA. The Committee notes that roughly 50 percent of the budget request is contained in only five Program Elements, of which one is greater than $400,000,000. The Committee is concerned by the level of resources requested in single Program Elements, particularly in light of DARPA's considerable financial flexibility. The Committee believes that transparency would be better served by reducing the size of DARPA's individual Program Elements.