What project MSL-02 buys
The Disruptive Microtechnologies project continues advancement in microelectronics, including electronic and optoelectronic devices, semiconductor device design and fabrication, and new materials and material structures. This includes developing next generation photonics, quantum, and organic circuits; developing new additive, subtractive, and combination fabrication tools that minimize waste and optimize performance; and new concepts in design, integration, and hardware security that leverages commercial scaling while preserving the superiority of defense systems. In doing so, this area will create disruptive opportunities and prevent the surprise associated with the unintended consequences of technology development. Prior to FY 2026, efforts in this Project were funded in PE 0602716E, Project ELT-02.
Project MSL-02 funding, FY2025–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) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 0.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 354.6 |
| FY2027 | Request | 368.3 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 186.9 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 121.3 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 124.3 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 125.3 |
29 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. 11 of them describe FY2027 work in enough detail to have their own page; the rest are shown here in full. Coverage is partial across the corpus, so count activities, never total them.
- Initiate design of circuits and modules for very large-scale photonic integration. - Initiate design of advanced concepts for flexible batteries and energy storage devices. - Perform design and assessment of precision, maskless nanofabrication tools. - Initiate preliminary design of atomically precise molecular machines with initial…
Read the FY2027 plan →- Perform evaluation of novel design techniques for advanced circuits and modules with next generation capabilities. - Initiate a trade study on new hardware architectures that can leverage commercial scaling while preserving their security and lead to superior systems. - Evaluate technologies for the control of advanced materials down…
Read the FY2027 plan →- Deliver preliminary design review (PDR) for high-performance compute system. - Complete optical wafer design, tape out, and manufacturing. - Integrate optical wafer with digital high-performance compute wafer.
Read the FY2027 plan →- Demonstrate fully functional growth tools/techniques with precise control for complex material growth. - Achieve small-scale demonstrations of four new complex inorganic materials. - Scale up growth to at least 2 inches at single crystal quality for one complex material. - Demonstrate that growth process is uniform at large-scale and…
Read the FY2027 plan →- Develop thermal modeling and characterization capabilities to improve fidelity of thermal analysis of 3DHI stacks. - Establish reference EDA flow for improved design accuracy and reduced design cycle time. - Release alpha version of 3D-ADK, which includes standards, training documentation, revision control, and predictive modeling.
Read the FY2027 plan →- Demonstrate small, scalable and power-efficient MAMs for high-performance CIM. - Evaluate power-efficient models run on CIM hardware. - Demonstrate new capabilities compact, power efficient CIM offers in warfighter relevant use-cases.
Read the FY2027 plan →FY2027 planned work - Complete Preliminary Design Reviews for photonic circuits. - Complete Critical Design Reviews for photonic circuits. - Complete tapeout of initial photonic circuit designs. - Perform analysis of system-level performance including designed photonic circuit.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 increase reflects the shift from initial design activities to completing design and preparing it for fabrication.
FY2026 plans — current year - Complete initial Interface Control Document. - Deliver initial circuit design.
FY2027 planned work - Delivery of first energy storage device prototypes. - Perform function and safety tests of initial prototypes. - Report on manufacturing improvements and economic cost drivers.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 increase reflects the shift from initial feasibility analysis to prototype delivery and test.
FY2026 plans — current year - Perform initial safety testing on base materials for energy storage devices. - Demonstrate surrogate device operability. - Perform initial manufacturing feasibility analysis.
- Develop initial models capturing the physics of the separation processes to inform projections of prototype efficiency and throughput. - Perform initial experimental demonstration of technique achieving medium purity separation of simple feedstock. - Deliver initial commercialization plan that outlines value proposition, market…
Read the FY2027 plan →FY2027 planned work - Demonstrate increased read ability for proteins of greater length and complexity. - Complete microsystem design and prepare for tape out. - Initiate development of integrated system.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 increase reflects the shift from initial design to comprehensive design, demonstration, and development.
FY2026 plans — current year - Demonstrate the ability to read protein sequences of sufficient length and complexity. - Initiate microsystem design plan and develop software to predict performance of integrated system.
- Demonstrate complete device-level integration and characterization of scalable optomechanical infrared detectors. - Demonstrate preliminary testing and benchmarking of application-specific optomechanical infrared detectors for multiple applications. - Demonstrate field testing and environmental resilience of fully packaged…
Read the FY2027 plan →- Reduce transistor thermal resistance by 8x compared to SOA, and design thermal resistance test structures to demonstrate this reduction. - Design and fabricate RF PAs with a 16X increase in output power density, compared to SOA, close to electrical limit. - Demonstrate robust operation of RF transistors and PAs with a 16X increase in…
Read the FY2027 plan →- Integrate selected approaches for machine-learning-driven compilation in an end-to-end capability for optimization of compiled software for heterogeneous architectures. - Develop techniques to automatically recognize source code patterns that can be allocated to specific hardware accelerators. - Extend evaluation framework to…
Read the FY2027 plan →- Finalize design and fabricate radiation sources. - Conduct experimental and computational simulation campaigns to correlate single-event effects created by the new radiation sources with conventional heavy-ion data.
Read the FY2027 plan →FY2027 planned work - Develop features to the tools and systems that use autonomous and/or probabilistic components. - Demonstrate tools on a medium-complexity cyber-physical systems with autonomous components.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects a shift from initial development to proof-of-concept of tools.
FY2026 plans — current year - Scale approaches and tools to real-world demonstrations. - Demonstrate tools on a variety of cyber-physical systems. - Evaluate performance of the tools for realistic application scenarios.
FY2027 planned work - Deliver a critical design review (CDR) for a large-scale dense photonic array with updated simulated array performance. - Demonstrate a non-blocking routing network connecting nodes on a three-dimensional photonic grid. - Fabricate the large-scale photonic array design.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects the move from intensive design and demonstration to design review and fabrication.
FY2026 plans — current year - Develop fabrication flows and assembly processes capable of 3D integration of dense arrays of photonic links. - Demonstrate an out-of-plane guided optical path originating in the waveguide fabric of one discrete chip and terminating in the waveguide fabric of another discrete chip stacked on the initial chip. - Deliver a preliminary design review (PDR) for a large-scale dense photonic array capturing simulated array performance.
FY2027 planned work - Demonstrate large diameter UWBG material with low defect density and improved doping efficiency and uniformity. - Quantify improvement in material quality by designing, fabricating, and characterizing test structures. - Demonstrate optimized microfabrication processing with low resistance electrical contacts to UWBG materials with high robustness and reliability. - Continue to evaluate characterization results and compare to current state-of-the-art to quantify the performance improvement possible with UWBG devices.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects the shift from processes of interest to materials and device development and optimization.
FY2026 plans — current year - Further optimize UWBG material synthesis approaches to maintain low defect density and further improve doping efficiency and uniformity while simultaneously increasing wafer area. - Quantify improvement in material quality by designing, fabricating, and characterizing test structures. - Further optimize fabrication process to create robust, low resistance electrical contacts to UWBG materials and fabricate and characterize test structures to quantify robustness. - Continue to evaluate characterization results versus current state-of-the-art to quantify the improvement possible with UWBG devices.
FY2027 planned work - Demonstrate techniques for fully automated exploit chain synthesis, including link replacement and repair, in complex systems. - Demonstrate the capability to reproduce exploit chains in software of interest to transition partners and integrate tools and capabilities into operational contexts.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects ramping down of development of exploit chain techniques and focus shifting to demonstration and transition.
FY2026 plans — current year - Develop techniques for automated replacement and repair of exploit chains in complex systems. - Automate the analysis of the scale of applicability of an exploit chain across a corpus of software and firmware versions. - Extend the exploit chain model to incorporate and represent the system context.
FY2027 planned work - Evaluate five-tier stack high power test vehicle models for intended usage environment. - Demonstrate operational five-tier test vehicle to meet target thermal management capabilities in intended usage environment.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects the shift from development and demonstration to test and evaluation.
FY2026 plans — current year - Begin development of five-tier test vehicle for intended usage environment. - Demonstrate operational five-tier test vehicle to meet target thermal management capabilities in a laboratory.
FY2027 planned work - Demonstrate optimized algorithms and computational performance of nanoresonator-based computing cores for complex physical problems of interest to the DoW. - Initiate size weight and power reduction and systems-level packaging of nanoresonator-based computing cores for DoW relevant applications.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects a shift from system development to application-specific demonstration and refinement.
FY2026 plans — current year - Initiate development of two-dimensional novel nanoresonator-based computing engine arrays for high speed, energy efficient scientific computations. - Initiate optimization and benchmarking of the performance of nanoresonator-based computing cores against state-of-the-art solvers for complex physical problems of interest to the DoW.
FY2027 planned work - Demonstrate sharp atomic layer growth. - Demonstrate multiple atomically flat, compositionally sharp thin heterogenous layers.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects the change from initial scientific evaluation to actual technology demonstration.
FY2026 plans — current year - Initiate multiple lattice mismatched nano-meter heterogeneous semiconductor layers with high electrical performance on silicon substrate. - Evaluate quality of initial multiple lattice mismatched nano-meter heterogeneous semiconductor layers.
FY2027 planned work - Experimentally demonstrate optical detector modules for enhanced sensitivity.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects the shift from design to fabrication and demonstration.
FY2026 plans — current year - Experimentally demonstrate generator and interferometer circuit subsystems. - Complete overall system design for compact optical detector modules the provide enhanced sensitivity.
FY2027 planned work - Transition filter technology to DoW radar systems and high-volume communications market.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects the shift from technology integration and demonstration to readying the technology for transition.
FY2026 plans — current year - Demonstrate breakthrough filter technology through transition focused exemplars.
FY2027 planned work - Begin functional test and performance characterization at high temperature.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects the shift from design and fabrication of the discrete high temperature components to the completion of fabrication and initial testing.
FY2026 plans — current year - Complete design and simulation of integrated sensor module. - Complete fabrication of integrated sensor module.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects program completion.
FY2026 plans — current year - Maximize the output power of compact G-band III-V MMIC PAs that use the silicon-like multilayer interconnects while optimizing efficiency. - Design, fabricate and test circularly-polarized, high-power transmit and ultra-low noise receive array test articles.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects program completion.
FY2026 plans — current year - Experimentally demonstrate gate drive and control circuitries for high efficiency and compact radiation tolerant POL converters. - Demonstrate device integration technologies which enables high-efficiency, high-energy-density POL converters. - Demonstrate fully integrated, high efficiency and compact radiation tolerant POL converters.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects program completion.
FY2026 plans — current year - Deliver finalized commercialization plan for advanced additive manufacturing technology. - Finalize additive manufacturing synthesis technique. - Demonstrate a functional microsystem that is fabricated with AMME technology.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects program completion.
FY2026 plans — current year - Construct system demonstrators utilizing visible-wavelength integrated platforms.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The FY 2027 decrease reflects program completion.
FY2026 plans — current year - Finalize adaptive array processing algorithms to meet SOAP goals. - Complete co-design of high-level hardware architectures to prove out the algorithms on-array.