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1 [1] (March 14, 2025)

handle is hein.crs/dspmrdt0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Research Service Inforrning the legislative debate since 1914 S March 14, 2025 Defense Primer: Department of Defense Classified Funding Introduction The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) annual budget submission includes requests for classified funding. In authorizing and appropriating funding for DOD in fiscal year (FY) 2024, Congress generally supported the department's request-in terms of amounts, locations, and purposes-to fund classified programs, including intelligence activities. Most DOD classified funding is requested within the Department of the Air Force budget. Some Members have raised concerns that such classification may hinder congressional oversight of, and transparency into, the DOD budget. For example, some Members have stated that funding requested by one entity and primarily used by another (typically described as pass- through funding) could misrepresent the allocation of funding for DOD. Such allocation may involve funding for DOD and agencies in the broader intelligence community (IC), as well as funding within DOD for military departments and defense agencies. This product provides background information and issues facing Congress concerning classified funding in the DOD budget. Background Amounts of Classified Funding According to a CRS analysis of publicly available DOD budget information, DOD requested for FY2025 a total of $89.9 billion in multiple types of appropriations accounts for line items supporting classified programs, accounting for 10.6% of its total discretionary funding request of $849.8 billion (see Figure 1). This figure may not include additional amounts for classified programs that are not identified as such in DOD budget documentation. Locations in Budget DOD classified funding is requested for line items in accounts managed by the military departments (i.e., the Departments of the Army, Air Force, and Navy) and by certain defense agencies (e.g., National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which are defense-wide organizations reporting directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense). Classified funding in the DOD budget funds, among other things, tactical defense intelligence activities in the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) and certain strategic intelligence activities in the National Intelligence Program (NIP), including the Central Intelligence Agency. (Government-wide funding requested for these intelligence programs, including both unclassified and classified amounts, totaled $101.6 billion for FY2025. For more information, see CRS In Focus IF10524, Defense Primer: Budgeting for National and Defense Intelligence, by Michael E. DeVine.) Categories of Funding DOD components request classified funding for three major types of budget accounts (or titles): operation and maintenance (O&M) to cover the operating costs of the Armed Forces; procurement to buy weapons and equipment; and research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) to fund next-generation technology. Figure I. FY2025 DOD Funding Requested for Classified Programs, by Appropriation Title and Military Department (in billions of dollars of budget authority) DOD Total: $89.9 billion Chart labels in billions. Air O&M $3.9 Force Procurement 5 .RDT&E Defense- O&M Wide Procurement $30.3 RDT&E Navy O&M $,0.7 $3.0 Procurement $0.0 RDT&E $22 Army O&M $2.4 $3.0 Procurement $002 RDT&E $0.6 Source: CRS analysis of Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) FY2025 budget materials. Notes: O&M is operation and maintenance; RDT&E is research, development, test, and evaluation. Figure may not include additional amounts for classified programs that are not identified as such in budget documentation. Totals may not sum due to rounding. Pass-Through Funding Pass-throughfunding is a term sometimes used to generally describe funding that is requested by one government entity but used by another. (DOD financial managers sometimes use a similar term, pass-throughs, to refer to something else entirely, namely, revolving fund revenues in certain fiscal years.) An unspecified portion of DOD's total classified funding is pass-through funding used by IC agencies. DOD requests most of its classified funding in the Department of https://crsreports.congress.

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