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It has been a couple of months since the President released his 2014 budget submission to Congress (PB14). With the Unmanned Systems and Robotics Directory Launched, we’ve finally had some time to do some analysis on the Defense budget. This is the same analysis we did for PB13 last year. Raw data (Excel format) is available for PB13 and PB14. This analysis does not include effects of sequestration or other Congressional changes as the budget is approved. View our webinar here that went through the analysis and walk through how to access detailed information relevant to you.
Update 10/24: The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments published a good analysis of where the Defense Budget is now, available here.

The above chart contains information on PB13 and PB14. There are two notable trends in the chart:

• Annual funding is decreasing: This is mainly due to a completion of acquisition efforts that has not been replaced by new acquisitions. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan required a lot of UxV purchases that are winding down. For UAVs, see our blog here about inventories through 2018. Purchases must be made months to years before delivery so we are seeing decreases based off peaking acquisition numbers. Additionally, there are several notable program cuts that I will highlight below.
• Previous year’s submission underestimates UxV funding: This is due to two reasons. First, many programs related to UxVs are small parts of larger programs. These larger programs have dedicated funding lines for several years, but details on the portion related to UxVs is only given for the next fiscal year (FY). Second, UxV new starts and increases to funding existing programs continue.

Once again we see the air domain dominating investments. Surprisingly, maritime maintains a greater investment than ground. The zeroing of the JGRE (Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise) funding line has decreased ground funding significantly with no other program start filling the funding gap.

The U.S. Navy continues to be the lead investor in unmanned systems, likely more than any other single investor, public or private. This investment is led by a big increase in funding for Triton but includes 74 other programs. DARPA does not detail funding more than two years out so expect that funding line to continue at current levels.

A good mix of Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) and Procurement funding lines is important for the long term health of robotics development. The slow decrease in RDT&E funding as seen above is not directly alarming as a large portion of these investments are only detailed for FY14. However, RDT&E funding in PB13 (FY13: $4.4B) shows a decrease of over 10% from FY13 to FY14 requests. The stability of procurement funding is a good sign over the next several years but the decrease in RDT&E funding puts longer term efforts into question.

Finally, let’s look at unmanned systems spending in relation to the entire defense budget. In blue we see a 10% increase in total defense funding from 2014 to 2018. In green and red are unmanned systems funding as a percent of the total budget for PB13 and PB14 respectively. There is a decrease in funding each year, though the decrease in FY14 is not as large as predicted in PB13. Based off this data, we expect unmanned systems as a percent of total defense spending to hover around 1% for the foreseeable future.  Given the small number of large programs that dominate UxV spending, a shift (more or less funding) in a single major program could greatly affect this average.

Various Notes:

• Best name for a program: Advanced Weapons Enabled by Submarine UAS against Mobile targets (AWESUM)
• Navy RQ-4 UAV (Triton): Increase in $300M total funding in FY14-FY17 from PB13 to PB14.
• OSD UAS investment (Unmanned Air Systems Common Development): A sizable decrease in funding as programs are moved from OSD to the services. The related funding may not disappear but is subject to cuts from other organizations with different priorities. This follows in the footsteps of JGRE, who’s funding was moved in FY13 to other OSD lines not committed to unmanned systems.
• Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA): The Air Force was the only service to use this term and used it interchangeably with UAV and UAS.
• Joint IED Defeat Fund (JEIDDF):

  This fund has been a separate funding document for the Army since PB08 but is not included in PB14. (Update: 9/16) The JIEDDF is included in the OCO budget submission and shows a dramatically decreasing budget over the FYDP.

Data on Specific Programs

Our research found 46 unmanned systems acquisition program lines, put into the following categories:

For subscribers to the Unmanned Systems and Robotics Directory we are almost complete with some additional analysis of these programs, including:

• Procurement quantities FY14-FY18
• Unit costs
• Contracts
• Major performers

A sample of this data for MQ-1C Gray Eagle is here (Excel) and here (PowerPoint). For more information and subscription access to the directory, click here.

Research Background