Congressmen: more money for military research.

The Defense Department needs to boost its investments in science and technology, said lawmakers from the Delaware Valley region. The additional spending on research is important both to improve the capabilities of the military forces and also to keep the industrial base vibrant, said Reps. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), in recent interviews.

Weldon stressed that even though defense spending has gone up significantly this year, the increases are not funding a lot of new technology, but rather existing weapon programs and health care requirements. "When you get through all of that, the actual increase in defense spending is around $10 billion," he said.

"We're building fewer ships in President Bush's budget than we did under President Clinton." Weldon noted that he was the only Republican who voted against the president's budget, "because I wasn't happy with the fact that the $10 billion they set aside should have been put into new programs and technologies," he said.

Bartlett, who was a scientist and inventor before being elected to Congress, said that more federal dollars should be allocated for defense-related research. "We're all pleased, of course, that there's more money for defense [this year]. My concern is that there's not enough," he said. "If we don't get a big increase in funding, through an emergency supplemental for instance, I think at the end of the day, our military might be worse off, less ready, at the end of this war than it was before it started," Bartlett said.

"I understand that we want a balanced budget. I understand there are other priorities, but if we don't do this right, no other priority matters," he said. "Many of our pilots are flying planes that are older than they are--planes their fathers flew. You can't have the world's best military and be flying 40-year-old planes. We took a modernization holiday for eight years, and we have to come back very strongly, or we are going to live to regret that," he said.

Cummings noted that defense technology investments are very valuable to the economy of the Delaware Valley. "It helps this region from the standpoint of jobs, economic development, business development, and that's very important.

"This is a defense year, with the threats to our country and the problems that have taken front-and-center stage since September 11. This is the time for defense types of technology to play an important role," Cummings said.