What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 613003 of PE 0601102F. 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.
- Continue investigating multidisciplinary approaches for studying, using, mimicking, synthesizing, and adapting to the ways natural systems are built, assembled and organized, and functioning to accomplish their objectives. - Continue to develop a fundamental understanding of biochemical mechanisms and control procedures for the production and manufacture of natural materials and develop reverse-engineering approaches to optimize the biochemical functionality. - Continue to develop approaches to adapt, blend, and mimic existing natural sensory systems and neural systems of varying complexity, to add existing capabilities to these organisms and design in-silico replicas with similar or advanced capabilities.
FY 2027 increased compared to FY 2026 by $1.255 million due to increased emphasis on Natural Materials and Systems. This increase reflects programmatic adjustments to the DAF Science and Technology portfolio for strategic realignment to optimize core research areas and improve resource efficiency. This will result in approximately 5 more grants awarded in Natural Materials and Systems.
FY2026: the year under way
Prior-year accomplishments and current-year plans from the same exhibit. Context for the FY2027 plan, not a series — an activity partitions its project exactly in the request year, but can under-cover it in earlier years.
- Investigate multidisciplinary approaches for studying, using, mimicking, synthesizing, and adapting to the ways natural systems are built, assembled and organized, and functioning to accomplish their objectives. - Develop a fundamental understanding of biochemical mechanisms and control procedures for the production and manufacture of natural materials and develop reverse-engineering approaches to optimize the biochemical functionality. - Develop approaches to adapt, blend, and mimic existing natural sensory systems and neural systems of varying complexity, to add existing capabilities to these organisms and design in-silico replicas with similar or advanced capabilities.
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 27.6 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 25.7 |
| FY2027 | Request | 27.0 |
This activity is 28% of project 613003's FY2027 request and 9.1% of PE 0601102F'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 613003
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 project page.