What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 060 of PE 0601110D8Z. 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 FY 2026 efforts at a reduced scale. • Explore additional ways for bringing transformative scientific research into the DoW research environment.
The decrease of $4.045 million between FY 2026 and FY 2027 reflects the DoW's scale down of the VBFF Program, specifically to focus department resources on essential technologies that will support our core national mission, the defense of our homeland.
FY2025–FY2026: what came before
Prior-year accomplishments and current-year plans from the same exhibit. Context for the FY2027 plan, not a series — an activity partitions its project exactly in the request year, but can under-cover it in earlier years.
The VBFF program is being sunset. Plans include 1) supporting previously selected classes of the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF) program through the completion of their awards; 2) continuing the Laboratory University Collaboration Initiative (LUCI) program. Continue the BFRST program to create a systematic exchange of information under secure environment and procedures, to increase leverage of the VBFF Fellow scientific exploration for new technology solutions to DoW challenges, from near-term to far-term. Plans will also explore pilots and prioritize other mechanisms to accelerate the transition of high-impact research into DoW applications through earlier integration with service laboratories and expanded cross-program collaboration.
Continue selection and funding of classes for the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF) program and the Laboratory University Collaboration Initiative (LUCI) program.
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 36.7 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 48.5 |
| FY2027 | Request | 44.5 |
This activity is 100% of project 060's FY2027 request and 51% of PE 0601110D8Z'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 060
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.