# Project AH6 — Disruptive Energetics and Propulsion Technologies

**Program element:** 0602141A — Lethality Technology  
**Project:** AH6  
**Component:** U.S. Army  
**Appropriation:** 2040 — RDT&E, Army  
**Budget Activity:** 2 — Applied Research  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602141A/AH6  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602141A

## Summary

Project AH6 — Disruptive Energetics and Propulsion Technologies requests $27.6M in FY2027, 12% of the $232.0M requested for program element 0602141A, up 451% on FY2026. 2 R-2A activities decompose the request, 1 new this cycle.

## Funding profile

| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 9.5 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 5.0 |
| FY2027 | Request | 27.6 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 19.5 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 17.7 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 18.0 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 17.4 |

> Estimate types are not summed. This project is one leaf of PE 0602141A; the PE total is the sum of its projects, never added to them.

## What project AH6 buys

This project investigates, models, and assesses energetic material and propulsion technologies to validate novel concepts such as maximizing total energy density and power delivered on target. This project also optimizes propellant grains for increased range and altering gun configurations to increase energy on target in order to exploit the controllable/scalable energy release required for improving effectiveness and reducing vulnerability of future gun/missile systems. Work in this project complements Program Element (PE) 0601102A (Defense Research Sciences) / Project AA7 (Mechanics and Ballistics), PE 0602141A (Lethality Technology) / Project AH7 (Lethality and Scalable Effects Technologies), PE 0602141A (Lethality Technology) / Project AH8 (Lethality Materials and Processes Technology), and PE 0602144A (Ground Technology) / Project BL1 (Materials and Manufacturing Research Technology) Work in this project is performed by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and Chemical Biological Center (CBC).

## Activities (R-2A) — 2

| Activity | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 | Move | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Synthetic Biomanufactured Energetics | — | — | 22.7 | new | [a1](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602141A/AH6/a1) |
| Synthesis, Formulation, Modeling, and Diagnostics of Energetic Materials for Explosive and Propellant Applications | 9.5 | 5.0 | 5.0 | −1% | — |

> Activities carry the prior, current and budget year only — no five-year plan. In the request year they partition this project exactly; in earlier years they can under-cover it.

### Synthetic Biomanufactured Energetics — NEW START

Will mature biological synthesis and biomanufacturing to produce multi-kilogram quantities of energetic materials for formulation assessments; design and develop AI models for additional bio-reachable precursors for advanced energetics applications; begin conducting experiments for scale-up of next precursor molecule; designs and…

Full year-by-year narrative: https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602141A/AH6/a1

### Synthesis, Formulation, Modeling, and Diagnostics of Energetic Materials for Explosive and Propellant Applications

**FY2027 planned work.** Will develop advanced materials and formulations containing energetic materials, energetic formulation ingredients, and metallic fuels for enhanced lethality and extended range; develop novel analytic techniques to accelerate screening of high performing materials and transition to government and industrial partners; apply coarse-grain methodologies to candidate formulations of non-homogeneous systems; assess reactive materials concepts for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) defeat; develop machine learning models for prediction of formulation performance and response to injury.

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** Funding decrease is an economic adjustment.

**FY2026 plans — current year.** Will design a optimized process to evaluate synthetic biology cellulose precursor materials and follow on nitrocellulose synthesis; develop scaled up formulations of novel energetic materials, plasticizers, polymers, and fuels for characterization and performance assessment; complete assessment of candidate reactive materials for munition applications and transition; refine coarse-grain mesoscale models and couple to continuum level modeling capability for non-homogeneous systems; develop advanced processing techniques for manufacturing of propellant and explosive munition formulations; develop machine learning models for rapid prediction of performance and survivability of novel materials.

**FY2025 accomplishments.** Will assess novel energetic materials and synthetically biomanufacturer precursor materials, and fuels previously discovered for scale up and formulation; conduct experiments and validate the in-house integrated materials engine and mesoscale model framework to assess precursor cellulose strain processing, and scale up of nitrocellulose synthesis, strength models that incorporate higher-fidelity physics such as crystal plasticity, crystallographic slip, and/or shear banding; determine final candidate reactive materials for further validation and transition. Assess quantum mechanical and/or machine learning models of reaction kinetics for computational fluid dynamic simulations of propellant initiation; design and develop advanced grains for increased muzzle velocity and range for gun propellants; develop and validate novel models of erosion for large caliber systems; develop novel gun tube designs for performance and thermal management to provide design paths for autocannon firepower from reduced weapon form factor; investigate optimized synthetic biology processes for development of nitrocellulose materials.

## What is NOT on this page

Congressional marks, the R-2 mission description and acquisition strategy, the industry vs government split of the whole request, and related program elements are recorded at **program-element** grain — an NDAA mark lands on a PE, never on a project. They are at https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602141A.

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Department of the Army RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibits R-2/R-2A/R-3, PE 0602141A project AH6 (PB PB2027).
- **MCP:** `mcp.hitchintel.com` — `budget_get_program_element(pe="0602141A")`.

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