What project CG4 buys
This project conducts experiments on single crystal diamond and diamond hetero-structure semiconductor materials, layered structures, and novel devices for Diamond Electronics and integrated photonics structures and devices for Radar, Communications, and improved Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) Department of War systems. Efforts include multiscale modeling, material and structure growth and characterization, and novel device design and fabrication as well as two-dimensional (2-D) electronics for bio-inspired neuromorphic sensors, processors, and memory. This research has application to radars, communication systems, electronic warfare, directed energy, electronics for hypersonic systems, radiation hard systems, quantum sensing, and others. This project directly supports Air and Missile Defense modernization priority capabilities by investigating essential component technologies for insertion into Multi-Mission Army Radar systems. This project addresses the challenges of integrating new materials into Silicon Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) processing flows, and electronics reliability including protection against unintended adversarial use of state-of-the-art semiconductor materials, devices, and systems for Air and Missile Defense in contested environments. Work in this project complements Program Element (PE) 0603466A (Air and Missile Defense Advanced Technology) Project AD6 (Next Generation Fires Radar Advanced Technology). Work in this project is performed by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C5ISR) Center.
Project CG4 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 | 8.1 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 10.6 |
| FY2027 | Request | 14.3 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 11.4 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 8.5 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 8.6 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 8.7 |
3 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. Coverage is partial across the corpus, so count activities, never total them.
FY2027 planned work Will develop hardware designs that demonstrate system feasibility within an operationally relevant virtual environment. Will refine and assess system designs through virtual experiments quantifying performance of advanced radar hardware capabilities.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding increase supports planned system architecture and hardware design build activities following successful initial virtual experiments and trade study results.
FY2026 plans — current year Will design Digital Engineering- based virtual capability from emerging state-of-the-art hardware and software identified in the trade study; conduct initial virtual experiments and quantify performance of advanced radar capabilities.
FY2025 accomplishments Will investigate and perform a technology trade study to evaluate state-of-the-art hardware and software, determine system requirements, and quantify initial impact of hardware and software components to next generation radar performance through system-level modeling.
FY2027 planned work Will design and integrate photonic beamforming chip with RF circuitry to build true-time-delay based phased array antenna; explore free-space optical link concepts for RF synchronization; investigate non-linear conductivity in quantum materials for frequency conversion and rectification for passive and near-passive device concepts; improve RF diamond field-effect transistors (FET) power density using multi-finger designs, increased device periphery, and advanced gate dielectric and acceptor layer components; model and design device and amplifier circuits to create diamond RF power amplifiers based on diamond FETs.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding increase reflects additional research in diamond RF power amplifiers based on diamond FETs.
FY2026 plans — current year Will investigate design for RF electronic interposer integration architectures to control chip-scale beamformer photonic circuitry; investigate the response function of topological materials and device designs; advance in-house growth of intrinsic and boron-doped diamond epitaxial layers and utilize it to develop robust, low resistance contacts in diamond field-effect transistors (FETs); implement multi-finger designs and larger probe pitch layouts to improve impedance matching and achieve larger power output performance of diamond FETs; employ new atomic layer deposition capabilities to improve the chemical and electrical stability of the acceptor layer doping of diamond.
FY2025 accomplishments Will investigate phased array antenna with chip-scale beamformer photonic circuitry performance; investigate multi-layer electromagnetic metasurface designs incorporating wideband and multi-function conformal skins for smart radar enclosures; design low-size, weight, and Power (SWaP) multiband and distributed anti-jam antennas and algorithms for Army position, navigation and timing (PNT) and communications systems; assess novel multiband antenna array integrated with anti-jam system testbed; mature diamond surface field effect transistor output power density, device stability, and frequency range; investigate techniques to expand electronic grade single crystal diamond wafer diameter size.
FY2027 planned work Will migrate distributed radio frequency (RF) algorithms onto low-SWaP computers capable of combining distributed radar returns for enhanced detection of airborne threats; conduct experiments using a multi-node receiver network using the packaged and ruggedized hardware from the previous year; assess and report on the performance of a coordinated/distributed receiver to detect moving airborne targets in a survivable distributed architecture; investigate novel techniques for using alternate emitter sources to detect and locate moving airborne targets.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decrease is an economic adjustment.
FY2026 plans — current year Will design and fabricate a 5-node receiver network based on FY 2025 benchmark testing that is suitable for field experiments; will conduct field experiments to assess the performance of the receiver network and identify areas of needed improvement; assess internode synchronization and radar signal processing techniques; design and fabricate revised receivers that are packaged and ruggedized for future capstone field experiment; refine position calculation algorithm for a 5-node received network; assess and model multi-static radar techniques with varying synchronization performance.
FY2025 accomplishments Will validate coherent beamforming performance with a 2-node distributed transceiver; create a 5-node distributed transceiver and benchmark its performance; develop methods to calibrate the distributed transceivers and optimize the two-way time and frequency transfer algorithm.