# Distributed Teaming and Communication

**R-2A activity** of project 625329 — Warfighter Interfaces and Teaming  
**Program element:** 0602202F — Human Effectiveness Applied Research  
**Component:** U.S. Air Force · **Budget Activity:** 2  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602202F/625329/a3  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602202F/625329

## Summary

This activity requests $19.1M in FY2027, 58% of project 625329, down 45% 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 research on human-autonomy collaboration tools by executing an operationally relevant tech demonstration integrating advanced teaming assessment tools with novel HMI for distributed teamwork. -Continue research on NLP methods by collecting data in high-fidelity simulations to build models for assessing team communication effectiveness in air battle management exercises. -Continue research on adaptive communication management interfaces by refining and generalizing models that manage team communications and mitigate discrepancies. -Continue research on distributed teaming characteristics by conducting studies on team performance, adaptation, and resilience in mixed human-AI teams. -Continue research on enhanced conversational AI by testing and evaluating an adaptive text-to-speech system in an operationally relevant scenario. -Continue developing tools for integrating SA displays with language systems to enable bi-directional, conversational queries between humans and AI agents about COAs. -Continue development of the Intelligent Agent Teammate/Advisor by conducting experiments testing the effects of an Adaptive Teammate on human trust and team performance. -Continue to identify critical teaming factors for non-collocated teams by testing a high-fidelity resynchronization tool in a distributed teaming testbed. -Complete the refinement of guidelines for engendering trust in human-AI teams by finalizing design guidelines for trust elicitation, maintenance, and repair. -Complete the exploration of natural, ad hoc team coordination by preparing the final report. -Complete the R&D of nonintrusive metrics for assessing distributed team performance, culminating in a final report. -Complete research on integrating multi-domain information for JADC2, concluding with a final report. -Complete research on agent transparency for distributed teams, concluding with a final report. -Complete the exploration of test methods for bi-directional transparency, concluding with a final report. -Complete the collection and modeling of communication data from JADC2 domains, concluding with a final report.

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** FY 2027 decreased compared to FY 2026 by 15.668 million due to a reduced emphasis on optimizing team performance and the completion of work on JADC2 information integration, trust guidelines, and team performance metrics. This reduction reflects programmatic adjustments to the DAF Science and Technology portfolio for strategic realignment to optimize core research areas and improve resource efficiency.

## Before the request year

**FY2026 plans — current year.** -Continue research on distributed teaming solutions to maximize situation awareness and dynamic task management, including a joint experiment with the USAF Academy on an AI teamwork support tool. -Continue research on integrating multi-domain information for Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) by validating an interface suite to support non-kinetic duty officers in managing space and cyber Courses of Action (COAs). -Continue research on human-autonomy collaboration tools for resiliency by executing a human-in-the-loop study to evaluate the system's ability to manage team communications and mitigate discrepancies. -Continue exploring test methods for bi-directional transparency in human-machine teaming by integrating advanced human language technologies with novel JADC2 interfaces. -Continue refining guidelines for trust in human-machine teams by preparing a report from a study examining trust dynamics in a multi-agent C2 environment. -Continue research on natural ad hoc team coordination by refining and testing a high-fidelity interactive timeline display for distributed task management. -Continue collecting and modeling human communication data from live and simulated events, including an experiment on the impact of denied/degraded communications on teamwork, to improve models of natural language understanding. -Continue research into natural language processing (NLP) methods to improve teamwork assessments by integrating an NLP pipeline with an AI-driven ISR mission summary generator. -Commence development of an Intelligent Agent Teammate/Advisor by adapting cutting-edge AI to process multimodal inputs and create adaptive teammate technology. -Commence design of interface concepts for non-collocated teams operating in contested settings, including developing resynchronization tools to re-establish a common operating picture. -Commence research and development of novel, nonintrusive metrics and models to dynamically assess the performance of distributed ISR and Air Battle Management teams. -Commence research on adaptive communication management interfaces to enable resilient multi-mixed teams in JADC2 operations. -Commence research on enhanced conversational AI to enable high-bandwidth, human-like interaction with intelligent agents.

## Funding

| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 6.2 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 34.8 |
| FY2027 | Request | 19.1 |

> 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 625329

- [Human Machine Interactions](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602202F/625329/a2) — FY2027 13.7
- Collaborative Interfaces and Teaming — FY2027 0.0
- Multisensory Perceptions and Communication — FY2027 0.0
- System Analytics — FY2027 0.0

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Department of the Air Force RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibit R-2A, PE 0602202F project 625329 (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.*