|
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I'm Dr.
Christopher Sager, Principal Staff Scientist at the Human Resources
Research Organization. I am submitting testimony on behalf of the American
Psychological Association, APA, a scientific and professional organization
of more than 150,000 psychologists and affiliates. Although I am sure you
are aware of the large number of psychologists providing clinical services
to our military members here and abroad, you may be less familiar with the
extraordinary range of research conducted by psychological scientists
within the Department of Defense. Our behavioral researchers work on
issues critical to national defense, particularly with support from the
Army Research Institute and Army Research Laboratory; the Office of Naval
Research; and the Air Force Research Laboratory. I would like to address
the proposed cuts to the FY05 human-centered research budgets for these
military laboratories within the context of the larger Department of
Defense Science and Technology budget.
The President's budget request for basic and applied
research, or "S and T" at DoD in FY05 is $10.55 billion, a 12.7%
decrease from the enacted FY04 level. APA joins the Coalition for National
Security Research, a group of over 40 scientific associations and
universities, in urging the Subcommittee to provide DoD with $12.05
billion for S&T in FY05. This figure is in line with recommendations
of the independent Defense Science Board and the Quadrennial Defense
Review, which called for "a significant increase in funding for
S&T programs to a level of three percent of DoD spending per
year."
A portion of this overall Defense S&T budget funds
critical, human-related research in the broad categories of personnel,
training and leader development; warfighter protection, sustainment and
physical performance; and system interfaces and cognitive processing. Some
of my current work, for example, focuses on developing measures of
characteristics required of first-term soldiers and noncommissioned
officers in the Army of the future. These efforts will be used to help
Army selection and promotion systems meet the demands of the 21st century.
In a congressionally mandated report to this Committee,
DoD reported on the continuing erosion of its own support for research on
individual and group performance, leadership, communication, human-machine
interfaces, and decision-making. The Department found that "the
requirements for maintaining strong DoD support for behavioral, cognitive
and social science research capability are compelling" and that
"this area of military research has historically been extremely
productive" with "particularly high" return on investment
and "high operational impact."
Despite the critical need for strong research in this
area, the Administration has proposed an FY05 defense budget that would
slash funding for human-centered research by 12%. Army, Navy and Air Force
basic behavioral research would remain essentially flat in FY05, and both
the Air Force and Army would sustain deep, detrimental cuts to their
applied behavioral research programs - cuts in the range of 35%. APA urges
the Committee to, at a minimum, restore funding for human-centered
research at the FY04 level of $477.89 million.
In closing, I'd like to quote again from DoD's own report
to the Senate Appropriations Committee: "Military knowledge needs are
not sufficiently like the needs of the private sector that retooling
behavioral, cognitive and social science research carried out for other
purposes can be expected to substitute for service-supported research,
development, testing, and evaluation…our choice, therefore, is between
paying for it ourselves and not having it."
Mr. Chairman, our servicemembers deserve the best that we
can give them, and I hope that this Subcommittee will restore cuts to the
Defense S&T program and the human-centered research budget in
particular. Thank you. I am happy to answer any questions.
|
