What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 624347 of PE 0602102F. 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.
- Continue the validation, demonstration, and implementation of advanced computational methods to accelerate the invention, development, and characterization (including physical properties modeling) of next-generation alloy systems for future weapon systems. Activities include: -- Validation of first order predictions of high temperature alloys combined with novel accelerated testing methodologies. - Continue to analyze relationships between microstructure, processing, properties, and performance of affordable metallic and high-performance metallic materials, focused on current generation high temperature alloys and state of the art extreme temperature alternatives for expanded capability. Activities include: -- Determination of mechanical properties of refractory alloy produced by novel processing techniques. - Continue the development and validation of integrated material, manufacturing, and component analysis for life management and affordable structural materials for extreme environments, focusing on pushing existing alloys to higher temperatures and more extreme conditions. Activities include: -- Transition the product of in-house methodology on industrial adoption of crack behavior techniques. - Continue the validation of the value of integrated analytical tools in the optimization of the design and certification of additively manufactured metallic components, thereby reducing system cost and testing requirements. Activities include: -- Publish industry standard methodologies for qualifying additively manufactured metallic components. - Continue the development of fast-acting, material agnostic Research and Development (R&D) simulation capabilities to address hypersonic structure and next generation propulsion capabilities via metallic additive manufacturing, to provide an alternative production process where applicable, and to reduce reliance on traditional supply chains. Activities include: -- Transition to depots, initial modeling tools to assess innovative scan techniques used in additive manufacturing. - Complete the development and refinement of processing methods for affordable metals for low cost, attritable propulsion systems to support large volume throughput. - Continue research on applications of advanced data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to more efficiently address materials science problems, initially focused on accelerating characterization of materials and enabling higher fidelity microstructure and performance modeling. Activities include: -- Predict material properties of advanced metallics with machine learning tools developed for alloy design. - Continue the development and the transition of materials and processes for high temperature applications in extreme environments for future weapon systems. Activities include: -- Determination of the processing window for the development of scalable, industrial processing techniques. - Commence the enhancement of the Department of War's ability to manage environmentally assisted cracking of high strength aluminum alloys occurring on military aerospace platforms and use improved design criteria to prevent similar issues in new acquisition programs. - Commence the validation, development, and refinement of material performance models using unique experimental techniques to assess behavior in extreme environments such as thermo-mechanical fatigue for use in future expendable and reusable hypersonic systems. - Commence the development and optimization of advanced alloy compositions to enhance lethality of future weapon systems. Continue development of scalable processing techniques for improved control and affordability. Activities include: -- Validation of the energetic performance of reactive materials and the collection of data for modeling tools to further optimize performance.
FY 2027 funding decreased by $1.036 million compared to FY 2026 due to reduced investment in developing, analyzing, and modeling existing alloys, as the results are being transitioned to industrial partners.
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 the validation, demonstration, and implementation of advanced computational methods to accelerate the invention, development, and characterization (including physical properties modeling) of next-generation alloy systems for future weapon systems. - Continue to analyze relationships between microstructure, processing, properties, and performance of affordable metallic and high-performance metallic materials, focused on current generation high temperature alloys and state of the art extreme temperature alternatives for expanded capability. - Continue the development and validation of integrated material/manufacturing and component analysis for life management and development of affordable structural metals and materials in extreme environments, focuses on pushing existing alloys to increasingly higher temperatures and extreme conditions. - Continue the validation of the value of integrated analytical tools to optimize the design and certification of additively manufactured metallic components, thereby reducing system cost and testing requirements. - Continue the development of fast-acting, material agnostic research and development (R&D) simulation capabilities to address hypersonic structure and next generation propulsion capabilities via metallic additive manufacturing to provide an alternative production process where applicable, and to reduce reliance on traditional supply chains. - Continue the development and refinement of processing methods for affordable metals for low cost, attritable propulsion systems to support large volume throughput. - Continue research on application of advanced data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to more efficiently address materials science problems, initially focused on accelerating characterization of materials and enabling higher fidelity microstructure and performance modeling. - Commence the development and the transition of metal materials and processes for high temperature applications in extreme environments for future weapon systems.
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 | 17.1 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 19.9 |
| FY2027 | Request | 18.9 |
This activity is 34% of project 624347's FY2027 request and 14% of PE 0602102F'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.
4 activities in project 624347
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.