DOD Chem-Bio Defense Budget

It's difficult to analyse the DoD CB Defense Program's FY08/09 budget without looking at the longer-term trends before and after the 2008-2013 Program Objective Memorandum (POM). If you look at the OSD Comptroller's web site for FY 2008 and access the procurement and RDT&E programs, you'll find the appropriate documents for the CBDP. I thought that I would give an overview today, talk about procurement tomorrow, and talk about RDT&E on Thursday.

Overall, the DoD CBDP will obligate $1.63 billion dollars in FY 2008 against 40-odd acquisition projects and other efforts. That's a bit less than one percent of the DoD modernization budget for that year. Breaking it down, the CBDP will spend:

• $609.6 million for science and technology (37.4 percent)
• $381.9 million for advanced research and development (23.5 percent)
• $543.8 million for procurement (33.4 percent)
• $93.6 million for management functions (5.7 percent)

The services were a bit snippy about this budget because of the spending pattern - R&D spending is twice that of procurement (a trend that continues through the POM), which means they don't get as many toys. Part of this is because of Rumsfeld's direction to "assume risk in the short term" in order to invest more in out-year future tech. The other part is because most, if not all, of the CB defense projects (detection in particular) have slipped their fielding dates by several years (for several reasons, most involving poor management), forcing a move of funds into R&D (lest they be taken away).

Medical biological countermeasures is the obvious favorite in the program this year (see breakout of funds by area here). You can thank the DOD vaccine program (anthrax and smallpox vaccine buys) and the Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI) for that. The vaccine program is spending about $48 million in 2008, while TMTI is spending $248 million in tech base and $69 million in advanced R&D. Both programs' costs will continue to climb through 2013. The TMTI is the latest "good idea" from OSD, where DoD is basically sending a hell of a lot of money to industry to find "silver bullets" - a therapeutic that will address a broad range of BW threats, instead of a "single vaccine-single disease" approach.

This ambitious project is the latest Holy Grail for CBDP. In the late 1990s, the program promised free protective suits and vaccines for everyone. Then it was stand-off biological detection in 2000-2001. In 2002, OSD decided that every military base should have CB defense gear for antiterrorism, and threw a billion dollars at that problem. Now it's the terrorist BW threat, combined with the worry of "genetically engineered" BW agents, that drives OSD's "good idea" effort. Funny as in tragic. The installation protection effort started in 2004 (PM Guardian) got half its funds taken to kick-start TMTI, had to be reorganized, and is trying to get back on track. More on PM Guardian's failures later.

We're not going to see anything from TMTI for several years though. First, as a warning shot, Congress took $90 million of TMTI money from the DOD CBDP FY07 budget because there was no business plan other than "throw money at industry." Now a plan has been put together, and they're hiring lots of managers. But as with all medical research projects, and this one in particular, there's not going to be a final product ready for FDA approval for six to ten years, if we're lucky. But it's really, really important! To OSD leadership, not the warfighter, mind you.

In general, the DOD CBDP priorities run like this - chem-bio detection, protective suits and masks, and medical biological countermeasures. The funds left over go to CB defense information systems, medical chemical countermeasures, collective protection systems and decontamination systems. This has been pretty much the same profile for both R&D and procurement since 1995, which is funny since both Gulf Wars (1991 and 2003) showed that our forces really have no effective CB defense information systems, collective protection, or decon capability for most of our operational units or fixed sites.

Test and evaluation efforts have recently been called out in a separate budget line. Nearly $67 million is going to projects to modernize test and evaluation capabilities at Dugway Proving Ground, Edgewood, Dahlgren, and other test sites. The aging test infrastructure was one reason why new CB defense equipment has been delayed. Hard to tell when - or if - this funding is going to get the projects back on schedule. Another $54 million in management funds goes to Dugway every year to pay for salaries and other T&E needs. Past CBDP management funds were kept down to 4 to 4.5 percent of the total program costs, but that's bounced up to 5.8 percent (and rising) due to OSD deciding it's going to spend more on studies and upgrading service laboratories. This management slice also doesn't reflect the R&D funds spent at DTRA CB and the Joint Program Executive Office on managing projects directly.

More information can be found at the OSD office site in its annual report to Congress on CB defense.

Comments

[Robot.Economist]

Vaccine 'silver bullets'?

I'm not a doctor, but I've taken enough biology and organic chemistry to know that many BW weapons are too pathogenically different to allow for unified chemical solutions.

The TMTI page you linked to doesn't really explain what kind of approach DTRA is taking. Are they earnestly looking for the 'magic chemical' or is TMTI just going to yield some sort of vaccine cocktail pill?

[J.]

Dude - you don't want to know. They really want the "silver bullet" that can cure all bacterial or all hemmorhagic fevers, it really is that loosely defined, because it's set in the future when everything is possible. Yep, we have that kind of OSD leadership.

[Robot Economist]

I have three letters for that - omg.

Maybe we should spend part of the TMTI's budget on sending DTRA planners to a few intro and intermediate-level biology classes.

Seriously.

[Gab hsued]

Let me just say this, the DoD has a much better record of delivering products than NIH. Product per dollar is not even close between the two yet nobody bitches about academics spending 30 billion a year on very little solutions. Get real. Remember the war on cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc. You're a joke dude. If you knew what was going on you'd be in shock.