What project AA6 buys
This project fosters basic research to expand the Army's capabilities in the area of propulsion, platform mechanics, and autonomous air and ground platforms. This includes research to enable the investigation of risk-based design methodologies and control algorithms for enduring operation of rotorcraft and ground vehicles, artificial intelligence, and novel mobility mechanics to enable robotic systems to serve as productive embodied teaming agents. This effort researches propulsion and alternative energy systems to increase the reliability, efficiency, and survivability of air and/or ground platforms. This project also conducts research in support of advanced military vehicle technology with emphasis on sophisticated vehicle dynamics and simulation, vehicle-terrain interaction, vehicle control, and advanced track and suspension concepts. Advanced propulsion research will dramatically improve power density, performance, and thermal efficiency for advanced engines, transient heat transfer, high temperature materials, and thermodynamics. This project also supports state-of-the-art simulation technologies to achieve a more fundamental understanding of advanced mobility concepts. The subject research is directed at unique, state-of-the-art phenomena in specific areas such as: non-linear ground vehicle control algorithms, using off-road terrain characteristics; and unique mobility approaches, using advanced analytical and experimental procedures. The work in this project supports Program Element (PE) 0602148A (Future Vertical Lift Technology), PE 0602145A (Next Generation Combat Vehicle Technology), and PE 0601104A (University and Industry Rsch Ctrs). Work in this project is performed by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Aviation and Missile Center (AvMC), and Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC).
Project AA6 funding, FY2025–FY2031
Prior years are actuals, the budget year is the request, and the outyears are the FYDP plan. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure. Projects carry the full five-year plan; the activities inside them stop at the budget year.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 13.8 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 10.8 |
| FY2027 | Request | 31.0 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 33.4 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 34.7 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 35.1 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 31.5 |
9 accomplishments / planned programs
The R-2A exhibit — the only level of the budget that describes work that has not happened yet. Activities carry the prior, current and budget year only, no five-year plan. 1 of them describes FY2027 work in enough detail to have its own page; the rest are shown here in full. Coverage is partial across the corpus, so count activities, never total them.
Will investigate the transport and stability of new electrolytes, salts, and solvents as well as their compatibility with high capacity and high voltage electrode materials; study molten salt and eutectic electrolyte composition along with their structure, transport properties, physiochemical properties, and their interactions with…
Read the FY2027 plan →FY2027 planned work Will study multi-robot mission planning methodologies, specifically associated with attritable systems and their ability to deliver complex effects across various autonomous mission tasks; explore energy distribution methods across attritable autonomous robotics for air-ground robotic formations; investigate new multi-agent coordination architectures that enable robustness to changing environmental conditions across heterogeneous platforms; explore novel techniques for adapting system-level autonomy from both minimal human inputs and experiential data; investigate reasoning over partial observations and expand to prediction of mission conditions beyond field of view on heterogeneous…
FY2026 to FY2027 change This is not a new start effort. FY 2027 funding increase reflects the consolidation of other ongoing efforts within this project from Robotics Autonomy and Human Robotic Interface Research and Intelligent Systems to support the creation of Intelligent Robotics and Autonomy. Funding increase reflects additional research in multi-agent coordination architectures.
FY2027 planned work Will research adaptive flight control strategies and aerodynamic structures for structurally-reconfigurable small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to enable agile maneuvering in unpredictable, hostile, and cluttered conditions with adaptable maneuver behaviors for enemy engagement; study fundamentals of structural, sensing, and actuation into frameworks to support real-time shape adaptation for performance optimization; investigate machine learning methods for platform design and mission analysis; investigate new theoretical frameworks for resilience in heterogeneous multi-agent teams, emphasizing emergent behaviors under extreme and unmodeled adversarial conditions; explore new theoretical…
FY2026 to FY2027 change This is not a new start effort. FY 2027 funding increase reflects the consolidation of other ongoing efforts within this project from Resilient Multi-Agent Autonomy for Resilient Autonomous Agents and Structurally-Adaptive Unmanned Air Systems Research to support the creation of Enhanced Resilience Through Adaptive Multi-Agent Systems. Funding increase reflects additional research in multi-agent learning adaptation.
FY2027 planned work Will investigate stability of new electrolyte salts and solvents and their compatibility with high capacity and high voltage electrode materials; examine methods to promote necessary stability and transport in high-capacity electrode materials; explore advanced computational chemistry methods that can be integrated with experimental efforts and data science methods to enable advanced battery materials discovery and analysis; study electrode-electrolyte interphase formation as well as its stability and electrochemical properties for electrolytes that promote enhanced safety.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding increase support research into efficient batteries for a variety of operational conditions.
FY2027 planned work Will conduct experimental and computational investigations of the interactional aerodynamics of multi-rotor configurations; continue coupled computational fluid dynamics and structural dynamics investigations to apply novel algorithms and numerical methods to rotary-wing aeromechanics problems including high-speed forward flight.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding increase reflects additional research in rotary-wing aeromechanics.
FY2026 plans — current year Will continue computational aero-science investigations aimed at developing novel numerical methods for rotary-wing unique flow phenomena leveraging fundamental experiments on vortex wake stability to validate these methods; conduct systematic experimental investigations of multi-rotor configurations, including tandem, side-by-side, and coaxial rotors, to better understand the interactional aerodynamics using pioneering flow measurement techniques.
FY2025 accomplishments Will execute fundamental research in rotary-wing aeromechanics to lay the foundation for technologies relevant to future vertical lift such as advanced flow diagnostics and control techniques and automation for high-performance computing; conduct experimental measurements of interactional aerodynamics of multi-rotor and rotor-propeller configurations to validate complementary high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics simulations.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects realignment to Intelligent Robotics and Autonomy within this project.
FY2026 plans — current year Will study context aware, resource constrained mission planning methodologies that take into consideration electricity availability, battery charge, and fuel-based mobility costs for state estimation in the planning and execution of multi-robot missions; research thermal energy converters that offer electrical power generation from combustible fuel sources in contested environments; investigate reinforcement learning techniques for manipulation behavior development to improve speed and accuracy of dynamic task execution.
FY2025 accomplishments Will validate algorithms that enable autonomous energy distribution between ground and air vehicles for sustained increase in operational duration; investigate algorithms for optimized vehicle route planning for robot teams which factor in energy availability into mission constraints; conduct experiments for alternative power generation methods that will extend autonomous vehicle endurance in uncertain and contested environments; explore methods of whole body manipulation autonomy for improved energy awareness.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects realignment to Intelligent Robotics and Autonomy within this project.
FY2026 plans — current year Will develop algorithms capable of reasoning over partial environmental observations and predicting terrain beyond sensor field of view based on similar data; investigate methods and techniques that allow systems to learn from unconstrained prior experiences and adapt mobility and manipulation capabilities in the presence of unstructured, dynamic environments.
FY2025 accomplishments Will explore new architectures and navigation techniques that are resilient to unexpected operational and environmental conditions; develop algorithms capable of determining salient observations over long duration (hours) of operation; develop methods and techniques for increasing robustness of state estimation with limited sensor inputs; continue to investigate novel metrics for measuring complex autonomous system performance across multiple novel system architectures; study potential applicability of limited human input for real time system adaptation; explore perception and reasoning approaches for legged robotic autonomy and methods for heterogeneous teaming for multi-domain maneuver.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects realignment to Enhanced Resilience Through Adaptive Multi-Agent Systems within this project.
FY2026 plans — current year Will investigate dynamic maneuvers of small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) with a focus on the impact of disturbances, turbulence, gusts, and other environmental uncertainties; study fundamental vehicle dynamics, control, aerodynamic interactions, optimization techniques, and simplified models required for the creation of physics-based simulation and design environments; investigate cutting edge tools like machine learning combined with simple, low-order models to develop a better understanding of vehicle dynamics, UAS operating environments, and methods of mitigating uncertainty and unsteadiness.
FY2025 accomplishments Will investigate modeling and simulation software tools to enable structural, aerodynamic, and power and energy analysis of new concepts for small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) that include reconfigurable and resilient structures, super maneuverability, and extreme endurance; conduct basic experimental fluid mechanics studies leveraging dynamic model positioning to allow for the integration of control schemes in an aerodynamic test environment; investigate relevant unsteady fluid dynamics and structural responses to inform basic understanding of dynamic maneuvers like perching or small UAS at extreme range; investigate controls methods for extending small UAS mission life to include landing…
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects realignment to Enhanced Resilience Through Adaptive Multi-Agent Systems within this project.
FY2026 plans — current year Will study artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) algorithms for accomplishing multi-objective mission, that can adopt or reorganize into viable formations; study AI/ML approaches for anticipating adversarial behaviors.