If you’ve never taken a look at the info coming out of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, it’s worth a few minutes to familiarize yourself with what's available. CSBA, according to its Website, is a nonprofit public policy research institute focusing on defense planning and investments. The most recent analysis is the analysis of classified funding in the FY 2007 Defense budget request. Most of the funding goes toward big military systems like aircraft and satellites, giving the Air Force the largest share of DOD’s classified acquisition funding. According to CSBA, “classified programs account for about 44%, or $14.1 billion, of the Air Force’s procurement request and 39%, or $9.6 billion, of its R&D request.â€
What’s intriguing about this analysis is how Steven Kosiak figures out the acquisition areas and spending levels. Here’s the methodology:
Estimates of DoD’s classified acquisition budget request for FY 1987-FY 2007 were calculated from information found in DoD’s Procurement Programs (P-1) and Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (R-1) books.
All line items with budget numbers included in these documents were totaled. These calculations were then compared to the sums specified in the budget documents for each procurement account (e.g., Air Force Other Procurement) and research category (e.g., Defense-wide Operational Systems Development). The difference between the two figures provided the first part of the classified funding estimate. Each account was then examined for programs identified by code names (e.g., Link Plumeria, Black Light) or non-descriptive titles (e.g., Selected Activities, Special Update Program) for which DoD does not publicly reveal the purpose. The sum of the budgets for these programs furnished the second part of the classified funding estimate. These two parts were summed by Service to arrive at the estimate of total classified acquisition funding.
The chart goes back to 1987 and breaks out the service budgets by acquisition and R&D dollars.
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