House and Senate tackle Defense appropriations

By Juan Antonio Osuna
CRA Staff

Senate and House Appropriations Committees reported separate bills in late July for the Defense Department. Although funds for computing research appear intact in the House, the Senate committee recommended cuts.

In the House bill, HR 2126, the Computing Systems and Communications Technology (CSCT) program would be funded at $403 million in fiscal 1996--$1 million less than the Clinton administration's request. The Advanced Research Projects Agency manages the bulk of CSCT funds.

Although the House Appropriations Committee report (104-208) recommended no major changes to overall funding of the program, the committee did recommend a few shifts in emphasis:

• $11 million more for nuclear monitoring technologies to thwart terrorists.
• $10 million more for a software managers network.
• $8 million more for a Global Broadcast Service.
• $10 million less for seismic monitoring research.

The report said ARPA "should pursue cutting edge, high-risk/high-payoff research and advanced technologies." In the Senate bill, S 1087, the CSCT program would be funded at $373 million for fiscal 1996--$30 million less than the budget request. Changes would be distributed as follows:

• $13.3 million less for intelligent systems and software.
• $24.8 million less for high-performance computing-defense information enterprise.
• $5 million less for defense information warfare.
• $8 million more for an interoperative intelligent metacomputing test bed.
• $3.7 million more for the asset source for software engineering technology.

According to the Senate committee report (104-124), the $8 million for a metacomputing test bed would "be competitively awarded to a qualified Washington, DC, region-based institution of higher education with expertise and programs in computational science and informatics."

The Senate report recommended increasing the High-Performance Computing Modernization Program to $120 million--$30 million above the requested level. The extra funds would go to the supercomputing facility at the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization's Advanced Research Center.