DOD appropriations progress

Congressional negotiators this week settled on recommending $355.1 billion in new discretionary spending for the Defense Department for fiscal 2003, with a focus on improvements for the military's command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) functions.

The conference report, agreed upon Oct. 9 and awaiting approval by the House and Senate, marks an increase of $37.5 billion from the previous year's spending. It includes funding for numerous C4ISR programs, including:

* $251 million, including an addition to the amended budget request of $105 million, for the Army's Future Combat Systems, in which networked information and communications systems aim to provide a competitive edge to soldiers in the field and commanders in the control room.

* $131 million, $26 million more than the budget request, for the procurement of 22 Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that use radar, a TV camera and an infrared camera for surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting.

* $129 million for procurement of three Global Hawk UAVs, and $42 million to accelerate development of a Navy Global Hawk variant — the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance.

* $338 million for the Air Force's Multisensor Command and Control Constellation (MC2C) development program, a future "constellation" of air and space capabilities consisting primarily of a multisensor command and control aircraft, space-based systems, and UAVs.

* A 17 percent increase from last year's funding for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

* Net increases to the president's request for the National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP), which had represented the largest one-year increase in intelligence spending in over two decades.

"Good news for us that we will have an appropriations bill," said Cheryl Roby, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for programs and evaluation. "The investments are now there in C4ISR. We convinced our senior leadership that we will not be effective without those investments."

Congress was supposed to approve a fiscal 2003 budget by Oct. 1, so questions remain about whether DOD can spend money without having the Defense authorization bill in place.

DOD officials said that they believe they should be able to spend the money once it is approved, but that will require lawmakers to include a provision enabling the agency to spend the dollars before the funds have been authorized, Roby said.

"Once you got the money, you go ahead and spend it," Roby advised.

DOD, however, is not likely to have an authorization bill any time soon, she said. "Some of our new ideas may have some problem getting — through," Roby said. "We'll work it, though."