# Material State Awareness

**R-2A activity** of project 624349 — Materials Technology for Sustainment  
**Program element:** 0602102F — Materials  
**Component:** U.S. Air Force · **Budget Activity:** 2  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602102F/624349/a0  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602102F/624349

## Summary

This activity requests $16.2M in FY2027, 35% of project 624349, up 0.4% on FY2026. The R-2A exhibit describes it across FY2026–FY2027, including what the FY2027 money is planned to buy.

## What the FY2027 request buys

**FY2027 planned work.** - Continue advancing nondestructive evaluation (NDE) modeling/simulation capabilities to assess emerging material states and degradation behavior. These improved material assessments will increase availability and ensure structural integrity for future DAF systems. Activities include: -- Developing innovative modeling approaches combined with assisted defect analysis methods to accurately and reliably assess advanced materials (i.e., additively manufactured, ceramic matrix composites, and bonded structures) critical for structural applications on future systems. - Continue quantifying the impact of material variability using destructive and/or nondestructive methods to understand the impact on system performance. Activities in this FY include: -- Applying innovative ground truth materials characterization approaches to correlate how the microstructure and defects impact the accuracy of NDE measurements. - Continue developing new frameworks for ensuring sensing technologies, such as ultrasound, eddy current, and x-ray computed tomography, can quantitatively assess material properties and/or damage state in aerospace systems. This will optimize asset availability and maintenance processes while ensuring system safety. Activities in this FY include: -- Expanding data sets and apply advanced statistical methodologies to ensure the accuracy and reliability of NDE technologies. - Continue improving sensing technologies and digitization methods to enable faster, more reliable characterization, registration, and tracking of degradation and damage in specialty materials to improve system availability. Activities in this FY include: -- Developing new electromagnetic characterization approaches for materials with directional based properties. - Continue validating tools to improve characterization for quality assurance and diagnosing failure modes of specialty multilayer coatings on aircraft. Activities in this FY include: -- Assessing new approaches and incorporating electromagnetic models to evaluate multilayer specialty materials. - Continue developing automation and robotic technologies for visual nondestructive assessments that will realize human assisted inspection capabilities. Activities in this FY include: -- Assessing options for automated multi-spectral surface characterization to increase mission availability while ensuring integrity. - Continue developing accelerated assessments using conventional and flexible soft robotics through optimized path planning and robotics configurations. Activities in this FY include: -- Integrating sensors with miniature robotics for accelerated assessment of aerospace structural components to increase system availability.

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** Funding in FY 2027 increased by $0.065 million compared to FY 2026 due to minor programmatic adjustments to the DAF Science and Technology portfolio.

## Before the request year

**FY2026 plans — current year.** - Continue advancing non-destructive evaluation (NDE) modeling/simulation capabilities and leverage these advancements to enhance the detection, characterization, and quantification of damage in realistic aerospace structures and engine components. These improved damage assessments will increase component availability and ensure structural integrity, ultimately reducing maintenance actions. - Continue quantifying the impact of material variability on nondestructive inspection capability and reliability in weapon system components and aerospace structures. - Continue validating sensing technologies, such as ultrasound, eddy current, and x-ray computed tomography for detecting and characterizing material property changes and damage evolution in aerospace systems. This will improve predictive maintenance, increase availability, and reduce unnecessary maintenance while ensuring structural integrity. - Continue improving sensing technologies and digitization methods to enable faster, more reliable characterization, registration, and tracking of degradation and damage in specialty materials, leading to more affordable coatings assessments. - Continue validating tools to improve characterization and failure modes of specialty multilayer coatings on aircraft. - Continue developing automation and robotic technologies for visual nondestructive assessments that will realize human assisted inspection capabilities; begin to provide capabilities for automated multi-spectral characterization to increase mission availability while ensuring integrity and to reduce manhours required for inspection. - Continue developing technologies, including conventional robotics, miniaturized/highly-flexible soft robotics and sensors, and augmented data analysis, to reduce inspection time and burden on maintainers.

## Funding

| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 16.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 16.1 |
| FY2027 | Request | 16.2 |

> Prior, current and budget year only — an R-2A activity carries no five-year plan. It sums exactly into its project in the request year and not necessarily in any other.

## Other activities in project 624349

- [Failure Analysis and Mishap Prevention Technologies](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602102F/624349/a2) — FY2027 18.0
- [Materials/Processes for Affordable Survivability](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602102F/624349/a1) — FY2027 12.0

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Department of the Air Force RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibit R-2A, PE 0602102F project 624349 (PB PB2027). Narrative is the government's own text.
- **No marks, no contractors at this grain** — congressional marks land on the program element and R-3 performers on the project.
- **MCP:** `mcp.hitchintel.com` — `budget_get_activity`.

*HitchAI is an independent intelligence service, not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense. Budget figures are requests/estimates, not obligations.*