What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 108 of PE 0601108D8Z. 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.
Directed Energy Foundational Research: Leverage the academia and industry gap assessment to implement the long-term needs with respect to the directed energy foundational research. Award new university efforts with an emphasis on state-of-the-art research initiatives through the Joint Directed Energy Consortium. Investigate innovative high energy laser and high power microwave technologies that show potential in scalability for military applications. Monitor national and international efforts to leverage technology advancements. Conduct research on these technologies to gain more understanding on scalability. International collaboration: Team with external organizations like the European Office of Aerospace R&D or Asia Office of Aerospace R&D of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to fund university grants. These grants will emphasize collaboration between national and international universities to obtain synergy in basic/foundational research between partner nations.
The increase of $0.349 million is due to an Economic Adjustment from FY 2026 to FY 2027.
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.
Directed Energy Foundational Research: Investigate innovative high energy laser and high power microwave technologies that show potential to scale directed energy technologies for military applications. Monitor national and international efforts to leverage technology advancements. Conduct research on these technologies to gain a deeper perspective on scalability. Continue to determine long-term directed energy innovation gaps and identify state-of-the-art future initiatives. Leverage a new Joint Directed Energy Consortium and award new university efforts with an emphasis on innovative and enabling science and technology. International collaboration: Team with external organizations like the European Office of Aerospace R&D or Asia Office of Aerospace R&D of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to fund university grants. These grants will emphasize collaboration between national and international universities to obtain synergy in basic/foundational research between partner nations.
- Investigate innovative laser technologies that show potential in power scalability for high energy laser applications. Monitor national and international efforts to leverage technology advancements. Conduct foundational research on laser technologies to gain more understanding on scalability and utility. - Investigate innovative microwave technologies that show potential in power scalability for high power microwave applications. Monitor national and international efforts to leverage technology advancements. Conduct foundational research on microwave technologies to gain more understanding on scalability and utility. - Investigate innovative beam control phenomenology and methods of measuring, modeling, and manipulating laser and microwave beam propagation. Investigate high energy laser and high power microwave architectures with the potential to revolutionize performance. Leverage international research developments and technology advancements where possible.
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 | 16.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 16.7 |
| FY2027 | Request | 17.7 |
This activity is 100% of project 108's FY2027 request and 100% of PE 0601108D8Z'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.
1 activity in project 108
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.