What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 622068 of PE 0602602F. 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 seeker technology development of multi-function sensors, biology-inspired information processing, data fusion, and low-power computation, focusing on providing improvements in the performance and Cost, Size, Weight, and power of future munitions and intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) systems. Activities include commencing multi-sensor and low-cost efficient sensor research from biological and modular concepts for tactical airborne platforms. - Stop development of technologies that simplify, increase flexibility, and reduce the cost of advanced seeker concepts, enabling development of next generation seekers with greater precision, improved target detection, and lower cost. Stopping research and development of novel photonic devices and metasurface technologies and demonstrating early research concepts for photonic and optoelectronic devices supporting next generation seekers for advanced moving target strike capabilities with lower size, weight, power, and cost requirements. - Continue developing algorithmic approaches for integrating weapons into the kill chain to enable distributive, flexible seeker targeting. Activities include demonstrating advanced seeker signal processing technologies with the algorithmic approaches in the weapons kill chain and commencing autonomous target recognition and target discrimination research. - Continue development of weapon radomes and apertures to improve transmission and optical performance while increasing protection from severe operational environments. Activities include commencing integration research of radomes and optimized aperture designs for high-speed and hypersonic weapon applications. - Continue and expand research into electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) seekers and multi-function radio frequency (RF) systems on weapons, enabling development of EO/IR and multiple RF applications for weapons as well as to enable novel coherent RF functions. Activities include demonstrating prototypes of low-cost radio-frequency applications, commencing optimization research of different RF signals in low-cost and high-speed applications, and commencing research with IR and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) seekers for improving target detection and moving target engagements.
FY 2027 increased compared to FY 2026 by $2.230 million for technology investment to develop new radome and apertures for high-speed applications, advance low-cost radar seekers for affordable mass collaborative weapons, demonstrating feasibility of low-cost radio-frequency seekers through flight experiments, advance collaborative automatic target recognition technologies for swarming cooperative weapons, and mature infrared and spectral LiDAR seeker technology for advanced target discrimination capabilities.
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 seeker technology development of multi-function sensors, biology-inspired information processing, data fusion, and low-power computation, focusing on improvements in the performance and Cost, Size, Weight, and power of future munitions and intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) systems. - Continue developing technologies that simplify, increase flexibility, and reduce the cost of advanced seeker concepts, enabling the development of next generation seekers with greater precision at longer range and lower cost. - Continue developing algorithmic approaches for integrating weapons into the kill chain to enable distributive, flexible seeker targeting. - Continue development of weapon radomes and apertures to improve transmission and optical performance while increasing protection from severe operational environments. - Continue and expand research into multi-function radio frequency (RF) system on weapons, enabling development for multiple RF applications on weapons as well as to enable novel coherent RF functions.
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 | 13.3 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 12.1 |
| FY2027 | Request | 14.3 |
This activity is 19% of project 622068's FY2027 request and 11% of PE 0602602F'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.
3 activities in project 622068
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.