What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project CY86T1 of PE 0208086JCY. This is the budget justification's own description of work that has not happened yet — the one thing no other level of the budget carries.
PCTE will: • Incorporate infrastructure and services to support AI-software capabilities for on-prem and cloud environments. • Enhance CMF Capabilities & Readiness: Prioritize funding for critical components (licenses, SMEs, cybersecurity) and deliver features improving capability, functionality, and user experience – including leveraging commercial data centers – to support. • Incorporate federated single sign-on capabilities across the PCTE and JCWA ecosystem. • Continue to explore other cyber range capabilities to incorporate Operational Technologies (OT) into the PCTE platform via Hardware-in-the-Loop (HWIL). • Evaluate Government-Off-the-Shelf (GOTS) and Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) training and assessment tools to incorporate a validated, cost-effective solution for providing immediate, actionable feedback on course effectiveness and student comprehension. • Incorporate software development processes and procedures into the JCWA ecosystem. • Continuing development of AI-enhanced cybersecurity monitoring and reporting tools into the PCTE platform. • Complete decommissioning of remaining PCTE legacy systems.
The $2.406 million decrease from FY 2026 to FY 2027 reflects cost avoidances achieved through strategic partnerships and infrastructure consolidation. Collaboration with the Defense Innovation Unit enabled shared sustainment costs, while the integration of Industrial Control System, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, and gray‑space capabilities streamlined platform services and reduced duplicative efforts.
FY2025–FY2026: what came before
Prior-year accomplishments and current-year plans from the same exhibit. Context for the FY2027 plan, not a series — an activity partitions its project exactly in the request year, but can under-cover it in earlier years.
The program will expand PCTE’s capacity, improve training realism, and strengthen integration across the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture (JCWA). Planned efforts include: • Expand high‑side network access through JWICS to support Offensive Cyber Operations (OCO) training. • Maintain the three‑year ATO across all classification levels and transition the Authorizing Official role from the Army to USCYBERCOM. • Continue onboarding and maintaining JQRs on the PCTE platform and explore expansion into offensive cyber operator work roles. • Evaluate AI capabilities for help desk automation, rapid range generation, advanced user/traffic emulation, and cyber monitoring/reporting. • Assess AI‑enabled content development tools to improve training content creation and standardization. • Integrate with Joint Cyber Command and Control–Readiness (JCC2‑R) to enhance training readiness reporting and expand real‑time analytics. • Incorporate JCC2‑R authoritative data to establish a unified user‑management interface across training applications. • Establish a Developmental Cloud connection with the USCYBERCOM Command Cloud infrastructure. • Deliver platform features that improve capability, functionality, and user experience to support CMF mission readiness. • Incorporate automation to serve as a force multiplier, enabling more dynamic, scalable, and realistic training scenarios. • Expand cloud capabilities to augment the hybrid cloud infrastructure across UNCLASSIFIED, SECRET, and TOP SECRET domains, supporting JQRs, schoolhouse content, and more than 8,000 cyber operators. • Support the Cyber Resiliency and Training (CRT) product office in advancing JCWA integration efforts. • Refine Rapid Range development processes to accelerate cyber range deployment. • Expand the use of third‑party vendors to enhance individual training competencies.
Funding focuses on capability improvements that enhance Cyber Mission Force (CMF) operations and support mission readiness. Areas of planned enhancements are comprised of PCTE application features and capability updates required to accelerate initial PCTE schoolhouse training, improve CMF JQRs training, and increase mission rehearsal capabilities. Improvements to the PCTE capability such as instructor course management, improved notifications and alerts functionality, automated environment building, and external content integration will be developed and integrated to support USCYBERCOM holistic readiness objectives.
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 84.8 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 72.3 |
| FY2027 | Request | 69.9 |
This activity is 58% of project CY86T1's FY2027 request and 58% of PE 0208086JCY's. In the request year the activities under a project sum to it exactly; in the current year they under-cover it in about 9% of cases, so an activity's delta can legitimately exceed its parent's and the two must not be compared row to row.
4 activities in project CY86T1
Every R-2A line of this project, largest FY2027 request first. Linked where the activity has enough of its own narrative to carry a page; the rest are shown in full on the program-element page.