# Project 622502 — Ordnance Technology

**Program element:** 0602602F — Conventional Munitions  
**Project:** 622502  
**Component:** U.S. Air Force  
**Appropriation:** 3600 — RDT&E, Air Force  
**Budget Activity:** 2 — Applied Research  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602602F/622502  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602602F

## Summary

Project 622502 — Ordnance Technology requests $55.7M in FY2027, 43% of the $130.1M requested for program element 0602602F, down 9.6% on FY2026. 4 R-2A activities decompose the request.

## Funding profile

| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 62.8 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 61.6 |
| FY2027 | Request | 55.7 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 56.8 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 63.7 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 65.2 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 66.4 |

> Estimate types are not summed. This project is one leaf of PE 0602602F; the PE total is the sum of its projects, never added to them.

## What project 622502 buys

This project investigates, develops, and evaluates conventional ordnance technologies to establish technical feasibility and military utility for advanced explosives, fuzes, warheads, sub-munitions, and weapon airframes, carriage, and dispensing through integration by design and starting with desired mission effect to deliver war winning capabilities to defend the homeland, provide nuclear deterrence, and deliver force projection. The project also assesses the lethality and effectiveness of current and planned conventional weapons technology programs and assesses target vulnerability. The payoffs include improved storage capability and transportation safety of fully assembled weapons, improved warhead and fuze effectiveness, improved sub-munitions dispensing, low-cost airframe/subsystem components and structures, and reduced aerospace vehicle and weapon drag.

## Activities (R-2A) — 4

| Activity | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 | Move | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ordnance Technologies | 34.6 | 33.9 | 30.7 | −10% | [a3](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602602F/622502/a3) |
| Warhead Technologies | 11.7 | 11.5 | 10.4 | −10% | [a2](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602602F/622502/a2) |
| Fuze Technologies | 8.3 | 8.2 | 7.4 | −10% | — |
| Energetic Materials Technology | 8.2 | 8.0 | 7.2 | −10% | — |

> Activities carry the prior, current and budget year only — no five-year plan. In the request year they partition this project exactly; in earlier years they can under-cover it.

### Ordnance Technologies

- Continue developing validated mesoscale modeling and simulation tools for computational physics sciences application of ordnance performance and aging, enabling evolving ordnance concepts development necessary to build a more lethal force. - Continue to develop ordnance engineering-level simulation architecture capabilities, enabling…

Full year-by-year narrative: https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602602F/622502/a3

### Warhead Technologies

- Continue maturation of small, multi-output warhead technologies for soft-surface targets, to include limited penetration capability of surface-hardened structures and maritime targets, enabling more weapons on carrier per sortie while sustaining or enhancing lethality. Activities include developing models for water impact and…

Full year-by-year narrative: https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602602F/622502/a2

### Fuze Technologies

**FY2027 planned work.** - Continue implementation of digital engineering tools to enable digital design of munition fuzes, supporting optimized fuze and explosive system development for increased survivability and necessary lethality in maritime targets. Activities include developing test capabilities to fill knowledge gaps required for digital tools. - Continue development and demonstration of alternative packaging technology, supporting survivable fuze electronic component development in weapon systems designed for multi-mission purpose. Activities include designing and developing advanced testing systems to test survivable fuze electronic components for all missions. - Continue investigating the reliability and survivability of electronic components, enabling prediction and measurement of fuze performance during munition penetration at high-impact speeds. Activities include design, test, and update of models for fuze electronic component survivability in maritime targets. - Continue research facilitating tailored lethal effects, enabling optimum fuzing solutions development across the spectrum of weapon and target interactions as enabling technologies for agile weapon effect concepts. Activities include design and test of fuzing across multi-domains with focus on maritime targets. - Continue research for distributed and multi-point fuzing concepts as enabling technologies for agile weapon effect concepts, supporting the design and development of fuzes capable of surviving and reliably functioning in maritime interdiction scenarios. Activities include design and test of fuzing across multi-domains. - Continue fuze explosive interfaces analysis for robust definition of explosive train reliability and performance, enabling optimized fuze and explosive system development for increased survivability and necessary lethality in maritime targets. Activities include continuation of design and test of fuzing across counter-maritime domain. - Continue fuze endgame, active imaging for target detection and aim point selection, supporting robust radar system architectures development for prosecuting moving and relocatable targets in multiple adverse scenarios. Activities include continuation of design and test of fuzing across multi-domains. - Continue advances in fuze sensor materials for radar and infrared applications that allows increased performance in reduced size, weight, and power, including in harsh environments, for greater more agile, smaller, networked weapons. Activities include design and test of fuzing across harsh environments. - Complete implementing additive manufacturing techniques to increase fuze reliability and to facilitate distributed manufacturing. - Continue exploration of wireless fuze concept utilization in explosive system, supporting discovery of emerging and pervasive ordnance fuzing technologies. - Commence exploration into universal safe and arm concepts, leveraging Distributed Embedded Fuze concepts to align specific developmental architectures, that are compliant with and certified under DoW fuze safety standards, for broad weapon application.

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** FY 2027 decreased compared to FY 2026 by $0.781 million due to minor programmatic adjustments to the DAF Science and Technology portfolio.

**FY2026 plans — current year.** - Continue implementation of digital engineering tools to enable digital design of munition fuzes, supporting optimized fuze and explosive system development for increased survivability and necessary lethality in maritime targets. Activities include digitally designing fuzes across all relevant scenarios. - Continue development and demonstration of alternative packaging technology, supporting survivable fuze electronic component development in weapon systems designed for multi-mission purpose. - Continue investigating the reliability and survivability of electronic components, enabling prediction and measurement of fuze performance during munition penetration during high-impact speeds. - Continue research facilitating tailored lethal effects, enabling optimum fuzing solutions development across the spectrum of weapon and target interactions as enabling technologies for agile weapon effect concepts. - Continue research for distributed and multi-point fuzing concepts as enabling technologies for agile weapon effect concepts, supporting the design and development of fuzes capable of surviving and reliably functioning in maritime interdiction scenarios. - Continue fuze explosive interfaces analysis for robust definition of explosive train reliability and performance, enabling optimized fuze and explosive system development for increased survivability and necessary lethality in maritime targets. - Continue fuze endgame, active imaging for target detection and aim point selection, supporting robust radar system architectures development for prosecuting moving and relocatable targets in multiple adverse scenarios. - Continue advances in fuze sensor materials for radar and infrared applications that allows increased performance in reduced size, weight, and power, including in harsh environments, for greater more agile, smaller, networked weapons. - Continue implementing additive manufacturing techniques to increase fuze reliability and to facilitate distributed manufacturing, supporting modernized manufacturing capabilities development and evolving ordnance concepts necessary to build a more lethal force. - Commence exploration of wireless fuze concept utilization in explosive systems, supporting discovery of emerging and pervasive ordnance fuzing technologies.

### Energetic Materials Technology

**FY2027 planned work.** - Continue building and implementing experimental techniques/capabilities to quantify dynamic and mechanical properties as well as survivability of energetic materials in extreme temperature and vibrational environments, supporting energetic materials technology modeling that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. Activities include establishing a small-scale High Explosive Survivability Test for testing and validation of explosive survival relevant to reliability and performance. - Continue development of tools and analysis techniques to further the understanding of energy partitioning between blast/fragmentation and combined effects to optimize lethality against a broad spectrum of targets, providing operational weaponeering tools with robust lethality analyses and informed/efficient decision-making tools to enhance strategic planning. Activities include collection of blast performance for cast-cure counter-maritime formulations to calibrate predictive model. - Continue formulation of novel explosive fill balanced to satisfy severe environmental constraints and have acceptable performance, supporting discovery and development of energetic materials technology that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. Activities include continuation of certification protocol activities. - Continue maturation of novel Energetics for Advanced Shaped Charges for smaller/higher efficiency effects, supporting energetic materials technology modeling that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. Activities include warhead testing to quantify benefit of new CL-20 based Combined Effects Explosive in shape charge applications and building digital models of materials to accelerate warhead design. - Continue development of design capability for Digital Engineering of Energetic Material Systems to optimize survivability and performance of ordnance concepts, supporting energetic materials technology modeling that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. Activities include exploration on initial data set of warheads to enable digital twin modeling of warhead and correlation to performance to optimize digital engineering efforts. - Continue development of aging prediction models in energetic system of systems in order to enable model-justified munition service life extensions, supporting energetic materials technology modeling that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. Activities include identification and quantification of aging process not yet captured in energetic material aging models for predicting survivability, reliability, and performance. - Complete development of large-scale nano-energetic material fabrication, supporting energetic materials technology development, integration, modeling, and transition that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. - Complete research of Electrical and Electromagnetic Effects in Explosives for understanding and exploiting detonation/initiation sensitivity for dynamic ordnance effects. - Complete qualification of new combined effects explosives for enhancing damage mechanisms and lethality for mass- and volume-constrained applications. - Continue pervasive effort for development of CL-20 based explosives to increase lethality and range of advance munitions, supporting energetic materials technology development, integration, modeling, and transition that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions for digital warhead-fill design capabilities. Activities include qualification testing, transition activities to produce in industrial base, and full scale performance testing of actual warheads. - Commence development of advanced processing techniques for energetic materials manufacturing, focusing on lowering cost, increasing capacity, and fine-tuning performance of energetics material processing and refinement of energetic ingredients and formulations. Activities include scaling-up advanced solvent-antisolvent methods to pilot scale production, scaling-up advanced recrystallization and coating technologies, and engagement with Army Ammunition plants and defense industrial base organizations at technology transition. - Commence development of warhead X-ray computed tomography (XCT) methods for 3-dimensional digital model design, supporting lowering cost, increasing energetic system design, and enabling digital twin. Activities include XCT acquisition and processing definition, development of methods for translating data into digital model framework, and analysis and baselining of real-world munitions.

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** FY 2027 decreased compared to FY 2026 by $0.766 million due to minor programmatic adjustments to the DAF Science and Technology portfolio.

**FY2026 plans — current year.** - Continue building and implementing experimental techniques/capabilities to quantify dynamic and mechanical properties as well as survivability of energetic materials in extreme temperature and vibrational environments, supporting energetic materials technology modeling that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. - Continue development of tools and analysis techniques to further the understanding of energy partitioning between blast/fragmentation and combined effects to optimize lethality against a broad spectrum of targets, providing operational weaponeering tools with robust lethality analyses and informed/efficient decision-making tools to enhance strategic planning. - Continue formulation of novel explosive fill balanced to satisfy severe environmental constraints and have acceptable performance, supporting discovery and development of energetic materials technology that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. - Continue maturation of novel Energetics for Advanced Shaped Charges for smaller/higher efficiency effects, supporting energetic materials technology modeling that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. - Continue development of design capability for Digital Engineering of Energetic Material Systems to optimize survivability and performance of ordnance concepts, supporting energetic materials technology modeling that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. - Continue development of aging prediction models in energetic system of systems in order to enable model-justified munition service life extensions, supporting energetic materials technology modeling that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. - Continue development of large-scale nano-energetic material fabrication, supporting energetic materials technology development, integration, modeling, and transition that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. - Continue research of Electrical and Electromagnetic Effects in Explosives for understanding and exploiting detonation/initiation sensitivity for dynamic ordnance effects, supporting development of evolving ordnance concepts necessary to build a more lethal force. - Commence qualification of new combined effects explosives for enhancing damage mechanisms and lethality for mass- and volume-constrained applications, supporting energetic materials technology development, integration, modeling, and transition that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions. - Commence development of CL-20 based explosives to increase lethality and range of advance munitions, supporting energetic materials technology development, integration, modeling, and transition that maximizes weapon lethality, survivability, effectiveness and safety for air-delivered munitions.

## What is NOT on this page

Congressional marks, the R-2 mission description and acquisition strategy, the industry vs government split of the whole request, and related program elements are recorded at **program-element** grain — an NDAA mark lands on a PE, never on a project. They are at https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602602F.

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Department of the Air Force RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibits R-2/R-2A/R-3, PE 0602602F project 622502 (PB PB2027).
- **MCP:** `mcp.hitchintel.com` — `budget_get_program_element(pe="0602602F")`.

*HitchAI is an independent intelligence service, not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense. Budget figures are requests/estimates, not obligations.*