military strategy no longer calls for incrementally better capabilities than those of a known adversary. Instead it calls for dominance over a wide range of adversaries in a wide range of circumstances. Innovation is central to underwriting the concepts and supporting the transformation needed to meet these objectives.¹¹

The expansion of the range and depth of the DOD’s needs should expand the range of researchers and research relevant to those needs. For many reasons, the DOD needs to attract the best and brightest university researchers. The demand for innovation across a wide range of disciplines places a premium on attracting a broad range of research talent. University programs provide proven access to new research vistas, offering new options for meeting challenges. The university programs also give the DOD ready access to eminent scientists and engineers whose talents are needed to address scientific and technical challenges.

To meet these expectations, the expanding range of technologies essential to the DOD mission includes new levels of interest in biological sciences, social sciences, environmental sciences, nanotechnology, robotics, and information technologies. Innovations in these and other areas are as essential to the success of future operations as past innovations in technology were to the success of earlier weapons systems.¹² This circumstance places much greater demand on both basic and applied research. At the same time, pressures on the defense budget are intense with the added costs of transformation and current operations.

Figure 3 shows the change in annual DOD 6.1 funding in real terms (constant dollars) from the 1993 level. The graph shows three lines corresponding to three different sets of inflation indexes (used to convert then-year dollar amounts to base-year, constant-dollar amounts). The figure shows that DOD basic research funding decreased in real terms from 1993 to 1998, then started to increase until 2002, when it began to level out.

As shown in Figure 3, in the face of competing pressures, the 6.1 funding decrease in 2004 from what it was in 1993 was about 10 percent in real terms according to the inflation indexes used by the DOD. The decrease in 2004 was significantly more in real terms if it is calculated using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or Higher Education Price Index (HEPI) instead of the indexes used by the DOD. Using the CPI, the decrease was about 18 percent. Using the higher education inflation index, it was about 27 percent.

The most common concern expressed by the university community is its perception of shrinking support for university research (corresponding to

Front Matter (R1-R16)

Executive Summary (1-6)

Assessment of Department of Defense Basic Research (7-24)

APPENDIX A Biographical Sketches of Committee Members (25-36)

APPENDIX B Guest Speaker Presentations to the Committee (37-40)

APPENDIX C DOD Basic Research Organizations and Universities: Committee Site Visits and/or Interviews (41-43)

APPENDIX D Definitions of Basic, Applied, and Fundamental Research (44-50)

APPENDIX E Universities That Received Department of Defense 6.1 and 6.2 Funding in Fiscal Year 2002 (51-54)