WASHINGTON — The funding increases for military space programs that many officials had hoped to see in the 2003 budget and beyond are now unlikely to occur in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to several defense analysts.

The United States will need to expand spending at the Pentagon and non-defense agencies in order to prepare itself for future attacks and it is not clear that space assets will be among the funding priorities, these analysts said.

And while civil space programs are unlikely to see an increase as a direct result of the attacks, some NASA experts say the allocation of the U.S. space agency’s roughly $15 billion budget could shift in light of the pressing new national security agenda. In particular, NASA could be asked to put renewed emphasis on existing technology development efforts aimed at helping the Federal Aviation Administration modernize air traffic control.

One U.S. government source said he believed NASA would help provide "solutions to the longer term challenge" of safeguarding the United States against further terrorist attacks.

Congress last week moved with exceptional speed in approving a $40 billion emergency spending package to begin rebuilding from the terrorist attacks and prepare for a long-term, sustained campaign against terrorism.

Of this increase, $20 billion is set aside for immediate disaster assistance and reconstruction and $20 billion is slated to enhance homeland defense and national security, according to Pentagon officials. Defense analysts say the break down could deliver as much as $12 billion for defense and the remaining $8 billion distributed to the intelligence community, Justice Department, Federal Aviation Administration and the Coast Guard for improved defense of U.S. homeland.

Pentagon officials and congressional aides said Sept. 14 that increases well beyond the $40 billion in emergency defense funding are in the offing. These sources at press time said a further $20 billion increase in the president’s defense spending request for Fiscal Year 2002, which begins Oct. 1, is being discussed by the White House and Pentagon.

Some predict that this additional defense increase will go for modernization programs that were cash-starved in the budget the president submitted at the beginning of the year.

"This will have nothing to do with rescue and emergency efforts," a Pentagon official said Sept. 14. "This will have nothing to do with the retaliation in response to the terrorist attacks. The funding will go to the wish lists for things that we’ll have several years from now," said the official.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said that the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense review, a comprehensive re-examination of U.S. military programs and priorities which was nearing completion, now "changes a great deal."

"We now have requirements that we didn’t contemplate two weeks ago," Wolfowitz told reporters at a Sept. 13 Pentagon briefing. "But I don’t think that means that the requirements that we contemplated for 10 and 15 years from now are necessarily all that different."

John Douglass, president of the Aerospace Industries Association here, said he anticipates that the attacks will precipitate funding increases for both the Pentagon and NASA.

"In the immediate future, the financial impact is going to be that this will clear away some of the clouds that have been around the defense budget," Douglas said in an interview. "There [also] will have to be more money for NASA and the FAA to make sure that the long term technology that we need to help us prevent these kind of things is put in place."

The U.S. government has done a good job of funding many aspects of national security that are handled by the Pentagon, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, said in a Sept. 13 interview. But it has not adequately provided resources needed for airport security, or the funding needed for training of personnel at checkpoints along the U.S. borders, Reed said.

The United States will also need to ensure that its hospitals are equipped to handle needs arising from similar assaults in the future — particularly those that may have wider impact due to the use of chemical or biological weapons, Reed said.

"I think that the argument that many of us have been trying to make for a long time is that national security is no longer the sole province of the Department of Defense," Reed said. "Even though we were investing billions of dollars to defend against high technology, our opponents used low-tech means — knives and terror — to strike a serious blow against this country."

The United States will need to improve its intelligence gathering by government personnel, but it is not clear that satellites will play a decreased role in spying, Reed said.

they cannot pull together the resources or personnel necessary to mount attacks, rather than try to counter specific operations, Reed said.

"I think we’ll talk about adding more resources to human intelligence, but I don’t know the degree to which we can limit satellite coverage — it’s an important part of what we do," Reed said.

Harold Brown, who served as U.S. secretary of defense under former president Jimmy Carter, said space programs are unlikely to see their funding cut to pay for other needs like human intelligence in the aftermath of the attacks.

But Brown said space programs may not grow as rapidly as space advocates had hoped after U.S. President George W. Bush became president and named Donald Rumsfeld, who had chaired a commission recommending raising space as a priority at the Pentagon, to serve as his secretary of defense.

Robert Davis, a consultant here who served on the Rumsfeld space commission, also said that while he did not think space programs would be cut, they are now unlikely to see increased funding.

The funding needed to help the Pentagon better respond to future threats similar to the Sept. 11 attacks may come from taking some money away from programs like the F-22 fighter aircraft, said Davis, former deputy undersecretary of defense for space.

Former U.S. Rep. Robert Walker (R-Penn.), who served as chairman of the House Science Committee, said that the United States is fiscally strong enough to increase spending in response to the attacks without robbing space programs at the Pentagon or NASA.

"If we had to do this with deficit money, we’d be in real trouble, but the decisions made in the mid-1990s that gave us a budget surplus are some of the smartest decisions in the last 10 years," said Walker, who is currently president of the Wexler Group here.

Debates about budget surpluses and the prudence of spending money earmarked for Social Security, were building to an ugly head in August, but that debate among members of Congress largely subsided in the days after the Sept. 11 attack.

Congressional aides said quibbles over funding sources are on hold for now as members of both major U.S. political parties pledge to do whatever is necessary to rebuild, beef up security, and conduct what many predict will be a long and costly war against terrorist aggression.

John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University here, said he does not foresee radical near term changes in spending plans for anything but defense and recovery.

"Ironically, I think it means NASA is in better shape than it was a week ago because there isn’t this imminent threat of reduced government spending," he said. "Nobody in their right mind would say that’s a good result of this horrible thing but it may be a reality."

Special correspondent Jason Sherman contributed to this report.