Volume 20: No. 7, July/August 2006

Supporting Human-Centered Defense Research on the Hill
By Heather Kelly

On May 24th, Bill Strickland, APA member and Vice President of the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO), delivered APA’s oral testimony on Fiscal Year 2007 funding for research within the Department of Defense (DoD) before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Testimony focused on reversing the proposed decline in support for DoD basic and applied research accounts in President Bush’s budget (a 16.3% decrease over the current funding level).

In terms of the DoD behavioral research accounts more specifically, Strickland urged Senate appropriators on behalf of APA to avoid cutting human-centered military research in FY07. The service laboratories support research in the broad categories of personnel, training and leader development; warfighter protection, sustainment and physical performance; system interfaces and cognitive processing; and intelligence-related processes such as detection of deception. The May hearing was another opportunity to highlight how critical these areas are to national security and how important it is, in today’s environment, for DoD to sponsor this mission-related research directly.

To see APA’s written and oral testimony regarding DoD research funding, visit the website.