Military scientists breathe sigh of relief: no budget crunch ahead.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.

The Pentagon's budget may be under fire, but fortunately for military scientists, the department's annual $2 billion investment in basic research is expected to enjoy immunity.

"It will remain in a very good posture for the next five or six years," said Zachary Lemnios, director of defense research and engineering at the Pentagon. "That said, the challenge is to get that community, both our researchers and our laboratories, and the researchers that we fund throughout academia, focused on game-changing concepts for the future."

Military labs also feel growing pressure to push technologies that have relevance in the battlefield.

"It will become even more important that I stay engaged with the major commands and understand what they want so that we can keep our technology focused," said Maj. Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Pawlikowski said she welcomes the scrutiny. "The more feedback I can get about what we're doing and its value to the Air Force, I think the better we can be," she said. "I think it will help give me some motivation, an incentive to really sharpen our pencil and really take a hard look at where we are spending our dollars and making sure we are not doing things inefficiently."

Like every other Defense Department organization, labs are being asked to cut administrative costs so more money is avail-able for actual research.

"I want as many scientists and engineers and science and technology dollars applied to doing real science than to covering more people in my headquarters, for example;" she said. "I'd like to think it's going to make us more efficient, and will perhaps help us to be even more successful in delivering capabilities that are affordable to the Air Force."

Rear Adm. Nevin P. Carr Jr., head of the Office of Naval Research, said one of his biggest challenges is ensuring that dollars are spent in the smartest possible way and that the research is connected to products that the Navy will ultimately use.

"We're all experiencing downward pressure and we're obligated to make sure we're justifying every dollar and making every dollar count," he said.

Carr is directing his staff to stay in contact with the fleet and with program managers so that the lab's focus and investments are shaped by what sailors and marines need. But he cautioned that ONR is not giving up on high-risk scientific pursuits. "Basic research, by definition, is research for which there may not be an application yet."

Advances in cell phones, for instance, resulted from the efforts of a Navy researcher who 20 years ago figured out how to economically produce gallium arsenide, an essential element that is used in microchips. "There wasn't an immediate connection to a cell phone or solid-state radar, but it opened up all the doors to those possibilities," he said. "That's the challenge, but also the promise, of basic research."

ONR also is focusing on transitioning technology from the...