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 novel position, navigation, and timing technology development for weapons, focusing on robust and tailorable navigation for GPS degraded and denied environments with intent to insert into demonstration for weapon programs. Key areas of development include open architecture filter, sensor signal processing, single and multi-weapon cooperative navigation. - Continue investigation of cooperative, autonomous, and collaborative weapon behaviors, focusing on development of robust algorithms and swarming weapon playbooks for weapons guidance to increase mission performance and survivability. - Continue development and flight experiments of precision navigation, emphasizing cruise missile size, weight, and power, and cost navigation solutions for constrained/denied navigation environments. Targeting Vision, Magnetic Navigation, and non-GPS satellite aiding modalities feeding operational open-architecture navigation filters. - Stop flight testing of articulating head missile at supersonic speeds at full scale to include analysis of range extension through airframe morphing and articulation. - Continue computational intelligence learning to develop tactics for multi-weapon engagements, focusing on development and test of computational intelligence algorithms that can increase the capability and performance of a weapon. - Continue synthetic aperture radar-based alternative-navigation technology investigation to develop mission and cost, size, weight, and power navigation solutions for constrained/denied navigation environments. - Continue post-weapon deployment data analytics to improve guidance, navigation, and controls models and autonomy tactics, enabling development and test of computational intelligence algorithms that can increase the capability and performance of weapons guidance and control. - Continue flight experiments of networked collaborative autonomy plays and tactics for weapon survivability and lethality in contested environments, enabling collaborative multi-weapon maneuver algorithms development to increase battle state awareness and engagement. - Continue software enabled weapons research focused on accelerating data-driven weapon software updates. - Commence development of heterogeneous networked weapon software and hardware to enable interoperability to support weapon high-low mix employments. - Commence flight test of all-source positioning and navigation (ASPN) and weapon open system architecture (WOSA) compliant prototype/testbed, enabling development of third party modular alternative precision, navigation, and timing (alt-PNT) aiding technology. - Commence weapons size, weight, and power design of synthetic aperture radar-based alternative-navigation technology for global positioning system (GPS) denied environments to support flight testing on operationally relevant platforms. - Commence development of hardware-in-the-loop testbed for software enabled weapons to accelerate data-driven weapon software updates, aiding alignment with armament program offices.
FY 2027 increased compared to FY 2026 by $5.292 million for technology investment to demonstrate non-GPS navigation sensors and architecture on guidance platforms in flight; develop networked weapon autonomy software, hardware, and architecture; and develop requirements to enable interoperability across multiple vendors within a weapon swarm in collaboration with customers.
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 novel position, navigation, and timing technology development for weapons, focusing on robust and tailorable navigation for global positioning system degraded and denied environments with intent to insert into demonstration for weapon programs. Key areas of development include open architecture filter, sensor signal processing, and single and multi-weapon cooperative navigation. - Continue investigation of cooperative, autonomous, and collaborative weapon behaviors, focusing on development of robust algorithms and swarming weapon playbooks for weapons guidance to increase mission performance and survivability. - Continue development and flight experiments of precision navigation, emphasizing cruise missile size, weight, and power and cost navigation solutions for constrained/denied navigation environments. Targeting Vision, Magnetic Navigation, and non-global positioning system (GPS) satellite aiding modalities feeding operational open-architecture navigation filters. - Continue flight testing of articulating head missile at supersonic speeds at full scale to include analysis of range extension through airframe morphing and articulation. Key activities include developing computational tools, a material database, wind tunnel models, and expertise to rapidly develop new high-speed weapons technology. - Continue computational intelligence learning to develop tactics for multi-weapon engagements, focusing on development and test of computational intelligence algorithms that can increase the capability and performance of a weapon. - Continue synthetic aperture radar-based alternative-navigation technology investigation to develop mission and cost, size, weight, and power navigation solutions for constrained/denied navigation environments. - Continue post-weapon deployment data analytics to improve guidance, navigation, and controls models and autonomy tactics, enabling development and test of computational intelligence algorithms that can increase the capability and performance of weapons guidance and control. - Continue flight experiments of networked collaborative autonomy plays and tactics for weapon survivability and lethality in contested environments, enabling collaborative multi-weapon maneuver algorithms development to increase battle state awareness and engagement. - Complete kinetic and electronic attack swarm plays incorporating cyber domain, electronic warfare, and kinetic effects, supporting development of collaborative multi-agent maneuver algorithms increasing battle state awareness and engagements. - Commence software enabled weapons research focused on accelerating data-driven weapon software updates.
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 | 31.6 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 28.6 |
| FY2027 | Request | 33.9 |
This activity is 46% of project 622068's FY2027 request and 26% 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.