What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project MQB-01 of PE 0602025E. 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.
- Expand evaluations of plausible utility-scale concepts as needed to prevent strategic surprise. - Finalize R&D plans, including detailed execution plans addressing the major risks associated with building a utility-scale quantum computer, planned risk mitigation steps, and plans for prototypes that will demonstrate risk reduction. - Continue to expand examination of R&D plans to include additional approaches. - Continue procuring long-lead hardware items needed to perform component, subsystem, and prototype research and development. - Validate critical prototypes, components, and subsystems needed for building a utility-scale quantum computer. - Perform R&D to demonstrate burning down the major risks associated with building a utility-scale quantum computer. - Implement test infrastructure needed to rigorously test a set of utility-scale quantum computer prototypes. - Begin working with external partners to evaluate applications and co-design system prototypes.
The FY 2027 increase reflects the shift from component research to prototype development.
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.
- Expand evaluations of plausible utility-scale concepts and expand development of applications to include additional approaches. - Continue examining Research and Development (R&D) plans, including detailed execution plans addressing the major risks associated with building a utility-scale quantum computer, planned risk mitigation steps, and plans for prototypes that will demonstrate risk reduction. - Expand examination of R&D plans to include additional approaches. - Identify and procure long-lead hardware items needed to perform component, subsystem, and prototype research and development. - Begin to validate critical prototypes, components, and subsystems needed for building a utility-scale quantum computer. - Begin performing R&D to demonstrate burning down the major risks associated with building a utility-scale quantum computer. - Begin to implement test infrastructure needed to rigorously test a set of utility-scale quantum computer prototypes.
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) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | Enacted | 282.0 |
| FY2027 | Request | 481.0 |
This activity is 80% of project MQB-01's FY2027 request and 30% of PE 0602025E'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.
7 activities in project MQB-01
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.