What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 355 of PE 0602000D8Z. 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.
- Develop an ultra-compact shaped charge warhead for penetration in armor targets for systems needing compact or lightweight warheads such as Weaponized UxS - Develop dissolvable, additively manufactured polymer mandrels for advanced rocket motor manufacturing to enable range increases in the same form factor motor - Investigate fire-ignition on individual target subcomponents to address when and how a fire starts to inform reactive material warheads design for maritime targets - Develop AI-assisted predictive multi-scale modeling of damage evolution and shock sensitivity of plastic bonded explosives - Increase funding enables the development of missile technologies to extend range and speed by developing energetic liner for solid rocket motors and cost effective Highly Loaded Grains (HLG) with extruded propellants.
The increase of $3.344 million reflects the Department priority to accelerate application of emerging energetics technologies to enhance range, speed and lethality.
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.
- Conduct scale up process development of printable minimum smoke propellants which will deliver printed propellants for validation testing. - Develop and begin testing of advanced energetics formulations that increases metal pushing capability performance of shaped charge & explosively formed penetrator warheads - Continue to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning that enables accelerated energetics materials development, processing and testing. - Conduct performance evaluation of Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane (CL-20) based explosives and propellant formulations to validate application in targeted warhead and propulsion systems.
Continue and expand development of advanced energetics for enhanced munition capability and improved industrial base capacity through novel processes and formulations through the following activities: - Develop advanced underwater explosive formulation (UNDEX) and validate performance using optimized modeling and small-scale experimentation methodologies. - Develop high performance advanced energetics formulations, including CL-20 for high performance propellants and explosives. - Develop novel synthesized energetics materials required for advanced formulations. - Develop advanced energetics materials using bio-technology and bio-industry derived sources.
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 | 13.5 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 12.5 |
| FY2027 | Request | 15.9 |
This activity is 100% of project 355's FY2027 request and 49% of PE 0602000D8Z'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 355
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.