What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 356 of PE 0603000D8Z. 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.
- Develop methods via AIREX to create Maritime Fire Initiation and Fire Damage. - Demonstrate PBXIH-19 Reactive Material against dynamic targets showing improvements in blast effects. - Develop and demonstrate high energy pulse propulsion technology in tactical rocket motor configuration. - Develop an enhanced preformed fragmenting warhead integrated within cast bodies to demonstrate increased lethality. - Demonstrate extruded rocket motor technology to increase loadout of 4.75” rockets to support affordable mass missile fires. - Increased funding will deliver flight test demonstration of a full up Solid Fuel Ramjet Projectile.
The increase of $7.071 million between FY 2026 and FY 2027 reflects budget fluctuations.
FY2025–FY2026: what came before
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.
- Demonstrate and deliver, for scale-up production, advanced energetic materials for munitions evaluation testing using end to end laboratory and pilot scale manufacturing through modern, continuous methods. - Conduct validation testing of advanced energetics combined with novel propulsion and warhead designs and demonstrate increased performance in lethality, range and speed. - Develop and test multiple effects explosives and warhead design to enhance overall weapon to target lethality. - Develop and test topology-optimized additively manufactured propellants that reduces rocket motor volume by 30% while maintaining performance. - Develop and conduct sub-scale testing of novel pulsed motors that enhance missile range and speed. - Begin to develop advanced energetics filled, minimum signature propellants for extended range tactical missiles. - Conduct in-water testing of survivable anti-maritime missile ordnance packages. - Complete lethality validation testing of submunitions with advanced energetics and CL-20 explosives.
The project executes its mission by strategically expanding development of advanced energetics capability and improved industrial base capacity through novel processes and formulations: The project initiatives include: - Begin development of production methods for advance energetic ingredients and formulations with a focus on CL-20 compound production capacity, cost reduction, and formulation development. - Develop processing technologies using biomanufacturing byproducts streams and synthesize two energetics ingredients of interest at laboratory scale. - Develop advanced energetics material using end to end laboratory and pilot scale manufacturing through modern, continuous methods that use digital feedback and quality by design/control. - Conduct laboratory and subscale testing by combining advanced energetics with novel propulsion and warhead designs and demonstrate increased performance – target lethality, range and speed. - Begin development of machine learning modeling and simulation tools to allow optimization of energetics material formulation and processing. - Apply advanced energetics formulations, including CL-20, for missile delivered submunitions payload development that provide enhanced area effects and target defeat capabilities. - Begin testing and demonstration of missile submunitions advanced energetics payloads with precision targeting and effector technologies.
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 | 31.2 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 20.9 |
| FY2027 | Request | 28.0 |
This activity is 52% of project 356's FY2027 request and 44% of PE 0603000D8Z'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 356
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.