What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 620200 of PE 0602020F. 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.
- Complete research in distributed coherent radars for Unmanned Areial Vehicle (UAV) swarms developing magnitude improvements in detection range and target location accuracy. - Pause completion research in optimizing and affordably manufacturing long range weapons. - Continue project to develop digitally programmable meta surfaces for persistent and resilient communications in contested environments. - Continue efforts to enhance navigation in contested environments for networked collaborative autonomy and develop surveillance detection routing for inter/intra-salvo communication. - Continue project for photonic and atomic navigation via optical metrology for asymmetrical advancement in Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) and synchronization to small platforms. - Continue development of next-gen laser resilient mirrors with improved imaging resolution for space domain awareness and missile warning and launch detection.
FY 2027 decreased compared to FY 2026 by $13.637 million due to 56% decreased emphasis on high-risk, high-payoff technology development. Continuing portfolio activities have been appropriately rescoped. This reduction reflects programmatic adjustments to the DAF Science and Technology portfolio for strategic realignment to optimize core research areas and improve resource efficiency.
FY2026: the year under way
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.
- Continue research in distributed coherent radars for Unmanned Areial Vehicle (UAV) swarms developing magnitude improvements in detection range and target location accuracy. - Continue research in optimizing and affordably manufacturing long range weapons. - Continue effort to deliver an ultra-wideband digital Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) equipped Electronic Attack/Electronic Warfare (EA/EW) hardened and neuromorphic edge computing to enable a network of sensors to operate at high altitudes. - Commence a program to develop digitally programmable meta surfaces for persistent and resilient communications in contested environments. - Commence efforts to enhance navigation in contested environments for networked collaborative autonomy and develop surveillance detection routing for inter/intra-salvo communication. - Commence program for photonic and atomic navigation via optical metrology for asymmetrical advancement in Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) and synchronization to small platforms. - Commence development of next-gen laser resilient mirrors with improved imaging resolution for space domain awareness and missile warning and launch detection.
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 | 17.5 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 24.2 |
| FY2027 | Request | 10.6 |
This activity is 24% of project 620200's FY2027 request and 24% of PE 0602020F'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.
3 activities in project 620200
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 program-element page.