What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 626095 of PE 0602204F. 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 applying research to autonomy techniques for mission resource management, command & control, sense making, resource planning, and mission orchestration. - Continue applied research in direct support of systems of systems programs. - Continue to accomplish performance understanding through simulation, demonstration, and blended simulation/live testing (multiple vehicles & sensors); develop additional functionality, especially dynamic geometric collaborative uncrewed aerial vehicle behaviors. - Continue expanding the capabilities and scope of computational efficiency of on-board reasoning for tactical-edge sensing autonomy beyond specific high value airborne targets to improve prosecution of a broader set of air and surface targets. - Continue research in foundational knowledge of management algorithms for battlespace awareness incorporating interacting air/ ground targets, air/air targets, and air/surface targets, and operationally representative contingencies. - Continue investigations of algorithms to perform information reasoning and continue to evolve forms of representations and combined representations and reasoning approaches. - Continue investigation of lightweight, low-power computational methods for edge computing solutions; to include neural emulation, cognitive processing, and machine learning techniques. - Continue to further applied research on the algorithmic tracking of multiple interacting targets across domains, environments, and operationally relevant contingencies. - Continue simulation scenarios/tests with uncrewed aerial vehicles, sensors, and various operating conditions. - Continue applied research with uncrewed aerial vehicles swarming technology for additional functionality. - Continue the use of natural language processing to extract activities from reports and other digitized information. - Commence development of assessment tools specifically for sensing autonomy, a subset of learning systems—software that learns and adapts for diverse applications. - Commence implementation of standards and guidelines for continuous verification and validation for sensing autonomy systems - Commence implementation of expected adversary-induced environments into simulation scenarios/test with uncrewed aerial vehicles, sensors, and various operating conditions.
FY 2027 decreased compared to FY 2026 by $2.276 million due to a reduction in the development of assessment and simulation of mission orchestration tools. This reduction is the result of a strategic realignment of the Department of the Air Force's Science and Technology (DAF S&T) portfolio, which aims to optimize core research areas and improve resource efficiency.
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 applying research to autonomy techniques for mission resource management, command & control, sense making, resource planning, and mission orchestration. - Continue applied research in direct support of systems of systems programs. - Continue to accomplish performance understanding through simulation, demonstration, and blended simulation/live testing (multiple vehicles & sensors); develop additional functionality, especially dynamic geometric collaborative uncrewed aerial vehicle behaviors. - Continue expanding the capabilities and scope of computational efficiency of on-board reasoning for tactical-edge sensing autonomy beyond specific high value airborne targets to improve prosecution of a broader set of air and surface targets. - Continue research in foundational knowledge of management algorithms for battlespace awareness incorporating interacting air/ground targets, air/air targets, and air/surface targets, and operationally representative contingencies. - Continue investigations of algorithms to perform information reasoning and continue to evolve forms of representations and combined representations and reasoning approaches. - Continue investigation of lightweight, low-power computational methods for edge computing solutions; to include neural emulation, cognitive processing, and machine learning techniques. - Commence further applied research on the algorithmic tracking of multiple interacting targets across domains, environments, and operationally relevant contingencies. - Commence simulation scenarios/tests with uncrewed aerial vehicles, sensors, and various operating conditions. - Commence applied research with uncrewed aerial vehicles swarming technology for additional functionality. - Commence the use of natural language processing to extract activities from reports.
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 | 4.7 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 12.3 |
| FY2027 | Request | 14.6 |
This activity is 42% of project 626095's FY2027 request and 8.8% of PE 0602204F'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.
4 activities in project 626095
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.