What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 624349 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 to identify and communicate best practices for ensuring repeatable quality and performance of specialty materials (e.g., ceramics, coatings, adhesives, resins) for assured material integrity and mission readiness throughout the life cycle of Department of the Air Force aircraft and weapon systems. Furthermore, demonstrations will refine the understanding of material durability and repair limits for emerging systems to reduce maintenance needs. Activities include: -- Material selection and qualification for multiple emerging systems. - Continue analysis of alternatives for advanced materials, processes, and designs to improve the durability, maintainability, and repair of outer mold line coatings, flexible access panel treatments, and multifunctional sensor systems, thereby increasing mission availability and readiness. Activities include: -- Down-selection to most promising candidates for further advancement. - Continue the advancement of specialty material surface treatment technologies and processes that enhance mission capability and reduce maintenance costs. Activities include: -- Development of promising new technology capability options while working directly with multiple program offices and the industrial base. - Commence exploratory research, modeling, and development of polymers, responsive materials, devices, and processes to enable increased survivability and decreased cost, size, weight and power (C-SWaP) in challenging Department of the Air Force environments for multidomain platforms. Activities include: -- Fabrication and assessment of novel polymer composites and devices for mission survivability and resilience.
Funding in FY 2027 increased by $0.049 million compared to FY 2026 due to minor programmatic adjustments to the DAF Science and Technology portfolio.
FY2026: the year under way
Prior-year accomplishments and current-year plans from the same exhibit. Context for the FY2027 plan, not a series — an activity partitions its project exactly in the request year, but can under-cover it in earlier years.
- Continue to identify and communicate best practices for ensuring repeatable quality and performance of specialty materials (e.g., ceramics, coatings, adhesives, resins) for assured material integrity and mission readiness throughout the life cycle of Department of the Air Force aircraft and weapon systems. Furthermore, demonstrations will refine the understanding of material durability and repair limits for emerging systems to reduce maintenance needs. - Continue the acceleration of the development of advanced materials, processes, and designs to improve the durability, maintainability, and repair of outer mold line coatings, flexible access panel treatments, and multifunctional sensor systems, thereby increasing mission availability and readiness. - Continue the advancement of specialty material surface treatment technologies and processes that enhance mission capability and reduce maintenance costs.
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 11.9 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 12.0 |
| FY2027 | Request | 12.0 |
This activity is 26% of project 624349's FY2027 request and 8.6% 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.
3 activities in project 624349
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.