Science and Technology Intact

The Air Force’s science and technology budget won’t suffer the deep cuts that the rest of USAF’s program will endure in Fiscal 2013, said Secretary Michael Donley Thursday. Speaking with reporters after an AFA-sponsored speech in Arlington, Va., Donley said the Air Force “tried to protect the seed corn” in its Fiscal 2013 budget build. The Air Force will present this spending proposal to Congress later this month. While there were “adjustments all across” the Air Force’s budget and even “in areas we protected,” the S&T program retains the same share of the overall budget as in the Fiscal 2012 build, he noted. “We set the size and made sure we did not reduce it,” said Donley. Though he acknowledged there were some shifts within the S&T accounts, he was not immediately able to say what they were. The Air Force’s new white paper explaining how the service will meet the Obama Administration’s newly issued defense strategic guidance characterizes America’s aerospace research and development infrastructure as “a national asset that must be protected.” This is the justification given for protecting the S&T investment.