What project A61 buys
This project conducts readily adaptable basic research on novel materials, radar, sensing, precision measurements and novel devices to address a range of scientific problems for Electronic Warfare (EW) applications. Efforts include novel materials research, modeling and simulation of integrated multi-modal sensing, novel designs of operational energy and scalable power for EW applications. The research has applications to operational energy, sensors, distributed sensor fusion, distributed radar, alternative position, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems for Global Positioning System (GPS)-denied environments, High Energy Laser (HEL) technologies and applications in the EW domain. Work in this project is performed by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL).
Project A61 funding, FY2026–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) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | Enacted | 38.2 |
| FY2027 | Request | 28.4 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 32.5 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 33.4 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 33.7 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 34.1 |
13 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 alternative diamond substrate configurations to enable epitaxial overgrowth of diamond and cubic boron nitride thin films to fabricate high-power, small form-factor radio frequency (RF) devices; research topological, two-dimensional, and magnetic materials and heterostructures to devise concepts for electromagnetic (EM)…
Read the FY2027 plan →FY2027 planned work Will explore nitrogen-vacancy-based, inertial sensing and associated charge carrier mobility/scattering mechanisms; explore the benefits of combining laser radar (LIDAR) and chip-scale, free-space optical communications for use in contested environments; conduct research on RF sensing and effects within a relevant payload and obtain data for validation; investigate methodologies for data exchange related to collaborative sensing between ground and air vehicles; investigate fusing classification diagrams and geometric methods to facilitate construction of models of physical systems with multiple, interacting physics.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects reduction in research supporting multi-agent sensing.
FY2026 plans — current year Will analyze possible multi-use photonic architectures capable of combined performance of ranging, timing, and data transfer to identify critical photonic components for further research; explore three "tiers" of multi-agent complex sensing, to include cooperative, collaborative, and coherent sensing (in order from most loosely coupled to most tightly coupled synchronization); identify temporal and spatial attributes for understanding complex environmental inputs to radio frequency (RF) modeling for effects associated with multiple sensor inputs; investigate spectral waveforms needed to invoke temporal and spatial attributes for fusion methodologies for coherent or incoherent sensing…
FY2027 planned work Will refine high-performance modeling and simulation of integrated multi-modal sensor data to detect and classify targets of interest for electronic warfare (EW) in resource-constrained environments to include vehicles, unattended ground systems, uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV), and the prime power infrastructure; conduct investigation on acoustic and magnetic sensing of ground/airborne vehicles from airborne platforms.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding increase reflects additional research in acoustic and magnetic sensing.
FY2026 plans — current year Will explore multi-state processing to increase algorithmic density for enhanced target knowledge and environmental considerations; explore high-performance modeling and simulation of integrated multi-modal sensor data for multi-modal, context aware inference at the edge discriminating similar targets such as decoy versus real.
FY2027 planned work Will explore algorithms and models to resolve large uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms based on high-resolution, distributed radio frequency (RF) sensing architectures.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding increase reflects additional research in algorithms and models to resolve large UAV swarms.
FY2026 plans — current year Will investigate new and unique coherent versus incoherent aperture techniques through the use of distributed radar approaches for the detection of air projectiles; identify specialized waveforms and algorithms for fusing distributed radar nodes to achieve detection with emphasis on synchronization aspects of the nodes.
FY2027 planned work Will investigate the role of programmable, nanoscale surface enhancements on heat dissipation characteristics between fluids and solid for multifunctional thermal management components.
FY2026 plans — current year Will explore novel nanostructure control of thermal properties in phase change architectures.
FY2027 planned work Will explore new, micro-resonator technologies for chip-scale, ultra-low-phase-noise microwave oscillators.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding increase reflects additional research in micro-resonator technologies.
FY2026 plans — current year Will conduct experiments on long-term stability of optical frequency comb resonators linked to environmentally insensitive resonators for over-arching, optical clock concepts.
FY2027 planned work Will investigate performance of solid-state protection materials in commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) imaging system testbed against short and ultrashort pulsed lasers for Uncrewed Systems (UxS) survivability.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects reduction in research supporting theoretical laser research.
FY2026 plans — current year Will experimentally and theoretically investigate ultrashort pulsed laser effects in relevant optical materials.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects realignment to Electronic Warfare (EW) Enabling Electronic and Photonic Physical Phenomena (E3P3) within this project.
FY2026 plans — current year Will conduct select experimental and theoretical studies of topological materials, two-dimensional materials, novel magnetic materials, and heterostructures to reveal novel phenomena for concepts in low-power sensing and information processing.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects realignment to Electronic Warfare (EW) Enabling Electronic and Photonic Physical Phenomena (E3P3) within this project.
FY2026 plans — current year Will conduct experiments to refine and validate models for photocatalyzed chemical fuels reactions; conduct research on transferability of machine learned force fields for modeling ion solvation and transport in battery electrolytes and application therein.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects realignment to Electronic Warfare (EW) Enabling Electronic and Photonic Physical Phenomena (E3P3) within this project.
FY2026 plans — current year Will investigate incorporating constraints in machine learning models of complex physical systems; investigate new multi-fidelity assimilation methods for machine learning of physical systems, based on previous identification of knowledge gaps in multi-fidelity machine learning; explore feasibility of employing machine-learning models with uncertainty to construct stochastic surrogate models of physical systems.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects realignment to Electronic Warfare (EW) Enabling Electronic and Photonic Physical Phenomena (E3P3) within this project.
FY2026 plans — current year Will apply high fidelity modeling codes to explore effects of compositional inhomogeneities in compound semiconductors on carrier transport in heterostructures relevant to high sensitivity sensing and imaging across the electromagnetic spectrum.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects realignment to Electronic Warfare (EW) Enabling Electronic and Photonic Physical Phenomena (E3P3) within this project.
FY2026 plans — current year Will investigate electromechanical designs and feedback mechanisms that mitigate noise processes in electrostatic gaps informing the limits of capacitive detection for numerous sensing applications; conduct research on initially merged electronic/ photonic architectures and materials identified to establish the state of the art baseline; advance theoretical modeling and experimental verification of non-linear processes in topological materials to understand the physics of polarization detection of signals or other modalities of electromagnetic (EM) signals across the spectrum; investigate the ability of passive non-linear dielectric surfaces to eliminate the need for resonant elements and…
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease reflects realignment to Electronic Warfare (EW) Enabling Electronic and Photonic Physical Phenomena (E3P3) within this project.
FY2026 plans — current year Will validate temperature stability within a high temperature memory device architecture using ferroelectric nitride materials based on silicon carbide templates; explore non-Hermitian meta-optics structures for control and manipulation of infrared radiation from multiple sources; investigate compatibility of potassium tantalate niobate (KTN) as an electro-optic material for photonic integrated circuits; further exploration of novel materials, heterostructures, and device designs for excitonic, plasmonic, and other light- matter interactions in non-traditional electromagnetic (EM) bands ranging from ultraviolet (UV) to terahertz (THz); investigate aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN) alloys…