What project 060 buys
The Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF) program supports world-class researchers in scientific areas of critical importance to the DoW and ensures the cultivation of exceptional talent. Fellows’ research spans a broad set of emerging scientific areas with transformative potential, including quantum information science, novel engineered materials, cognitive neuroscience and human-machine interfaces, engineering biology, applied and computational mathematics, networks, machine learning and artificial intelligence, manufacturing science, and others. The prestigious research program delivers the most innovative and transformational scientific ideas of relevance to the DoW, from the top scientists in the Nation. The program fosters close connections between academia and the defense science and engineering (S&E) enterprise, a primary goal of Strategic Support for Basic Research (SSBR) efforts. Fellows provide the Department the deep scientific expertise from today’s leading research universities and collaborate with defense scientists and engineers. This program is being sunset; awarded projects will run their course with no new VBFF awards being made. The project includes support for the Laboratory-University Collaboration Initiative (LUCI) program, which is designed to team scientists in the DoW laboratories with top academic researchers from the programs sponsored or overseen by the Office of the Secretary of War (in particular, the VBFF and MURI fellows), in order to collaboratively perform research on a topic of their choice and explore early adoption of the scientific discoveries for military applications, platforms and systems, operations, and strategic roadmaps. Three-year grants allow a deep exchange of ideas between academic and DoW research communities, bring the most recent scientific breakthroughs closer to DoW relevance, and greatly expand the skills and knowledge of the S&E workforce within the laboratories. The project also supports the Bush Fellows Research Study Team (BRFST) program, designed to allow selected leaders in the academic research community to engage with the DoW at high levels, including briefings from MAJCOMs and site visits to military installations.
Project 060 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 | 46.7 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 48.5 |
| FY2027 | Request | 44.5 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 33.5 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 22.3 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 12.2 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 5.7 |
1 accomplishment / planned program
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. Each 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.
• Continue FY 2026 efforts at a reduced scale. • Explore additional ways for bringing transformative scientific research into the DoW research environment.
Read the FY2027 plan →