What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 627622 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 development of processing software for multi-mode laser radar with a focus on processing efficiency. - Continue effort to reduce size, weight, power, and cost of laser radar systems and subsystems. - Continue efforts to improve the performance and capabilities of laser radar components, including: transmitters, detectors, and agile aperture and beam steering methods and mechanisms. - Continue efforts to improve and validate laser radar data processing and exploitation algorithms, including the associated development, verification, and validation of physics-based and mission-based performance models and simulations. - Commence system design studies for low cost, size, weight and power laser range finder payloads - Commence concept studies for improved resolution using tomography concepts
FY 2027 decreased compared to FY 2026 by $1.611 million due to a decreased emphasis in the development of laser radar sensing technologies. This reduction is the result of a strategic realignment of the Department of the Air Force's Science and Technology (DAF S&T) portfolio, which aims to optimize core research areas and improve resource efficiency.
FY2026: the year under way
Prior-year accomplishments and current-year plans from the same exhibit. Context for the FY2027 plan, not a series — an activity partitions its project exactly in the request year, but can under-cover it in earlier years.
- Continue development of processing software for multi-mode laser radar with a focus on processing efficiency. - Continue effort to reduce size, weight, power, and cost of laser radar systems and subsystems. - Continue efforts to improve the performance and capabilities of laser radar components, including: transmitters, detectors, and agile aperture and beam steering methods and mechanisms. - Commence efforts to improve and validate laser radar data processing and exploitation algorithms, including the associated development, verification, and validation of physics-based and mission-based performance models and simulations.
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 0.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 13.6 |
| FY2027 | Request | 11.9 |
This activity is 23% of project 627622's FY2027 request and 7.2% 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.
5 activities in project 627622
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.