# Project A61 — Sensing and Electromagnetics for Army Environments

**Program element:** 0601275A — Electronic Warfare Basic Research  
**Project:** A61  
**Component:** U.S. Army  
**Appropriation:** 2040 — RDT&E, Army  
**Budget Activity:** 1 — Basic Research  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0601275A/A61  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0601275A

## Summary

Project A61 — Sensing and Electromagnetics for Army Environments requests $28.4M in FY2027, 44% of the $64.0M requested for program element 0601275A, down 26% on FY2026. 13 R-2A activities decompose the request, 1 new this cycle.

## Funding profile

| 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 |

> Estimate types are not summed. This project is one leaf of PE 0601275A; the PE total is the sum of its projects, never added to them.

## 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).

## Activities (R-2A) — 13

| Activity | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 | Move | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electronic Warfare (EW) Enabling Electronic and Photonic Physical Phenomena (E3P3) | — | — | 18.1 | new | [a12](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0601275A/A61/a12) |
| Complex Effects Understanding and Modeling | — | 6.0 | 4.8 | −20% | — |
| Foundational Sensing | — | 2.0 | 2.0 | +0% | — |
| Foundational Distributed Radar | — | 1.2 | 1.2 | +0% | — |
| High Energy Laser (HEL) Materials and Thermal Management | — | 1.1 | 1.1 | +0% | — |
| Fundamentals for Precision Measurement for Contested Environments | — | 0.9 | 0.9 | +0% | — |
| Ultra-Short Pulse Laser Research | — | 0.5 | 0.4 | −20% | — |
| Beyond Novel Materials | — | 1.1 | — | −100% | — |
| Physics Research for Army Innovation | — | 2.1 | — | −100% | — |
| Physics-Informed Machine Learning for Complex Phenomena | — | 3.5 | — | −100% | — |
| Semiconductor Modeling for Advanced Electronics | — | 1.2 | — | −100% | — |
| Compact Non-Linear Elements and Non-Linear Arrays | — | 6.0 | — | −100% | — |
| Novel Materials and Architectures for Emerging Bands and Modalities | — | 4.6 | — | −100% | — |

> Activities carry the prior, current and budget year only — no five-year plan. In the request year they partition this project exactly; in earlier years they can under-cover it.

### Electronic Warfare (EW) Enabling Electronic and Photonic Physical Phenomena (E3P3) — NEW START

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)…

Full year-by-year narrative: https://hitchintel.com/programs/0601275A/A61/a12

### Complex Effects Understanding and Modeling

**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 techniques; further research manifold discovery techniques for dimensionality reduction to enable construction of surrogate models of time-dependent physical systems.

### Foundational 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.

### Foundational Distributed Radar

**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.

### High Energy Laser (HEL) Materials and Thermal Management

**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.

### Fundamentals for Precision Measurement for Contested Environments

**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.

### Ultra-Short Pulse Laser Research

**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.

### Beyond Novel 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.

### Physics Research for Army Innovation

**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.

### Physics-Informed Machine Learning for Complex Phenomena

**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.

### Semiconductor Modeling for Advanced Electronics

**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.

### Compact Non-Linear Elements and Non-Linear Arrays

**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 enable extremely wide bandwidth EM skins; conduct experiments on non-linear surfaces to validate functions such as radio frequency (RF) absorption, control of scattered fields, and antenna pattern emulation; investigate engineered dielectric anisotropy and validate benefits to size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C), wide bandwidth, and multi-functional antenna elements for compact array apertures.

### Novel Materials and Architectures for Emerging Bands and Modalities

**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 with high mole fraction of aluminum nitride (AlN) for efficient optoelectronics.

## What is NOT on this page

Congressional marks, the R-2 mission description and acquisition strategy, the industry vs government split of the whole request, and related program elements are recorded at **program-element** grain — an NDAA mark lands on a PE, never on a project. They are at https://hitchintel.com/programs/0601275A.

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Department of the Army RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibits R-2/R-2A/R-3, PE 0601275A project A61 (PB PB2027).
- **MCP:** `mcp.hitchintel.com` — `budget_get_program_element(pe="0601275A")`.

*HitchAI is an independent intelligence service, not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense. Budget figures are requests/estimates, not obligations.*