What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 630320 of PE 0603032F. 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.
- Complete studies of capsule payload environments and survivability, from spacedrop to payload delivery. - Complete analyses of re-entry communications and plasma black-out. - Commence testing to inform a quantitative S&T assessment of a multi-ton prototype capsule reentry aerodynamics, re-entry communications during hypersonic flight, and rapid atmospheric deceleration. - Commence testing to assess detectability, survivability, and ground operations for tactical payload delivery. - Commence analyses of capsule compatibility and integration with multiple vendor launch systems and multiple launch sites.
FY 2027 funding increased compared to FY 2026 by $2.353 million due to commencement of ground testing and rapid atmospheric deceleration for capsule deployment and delivery concepts.
FY2026: the year under way
Prior-year accomplishments and current-year plans from the same exhibit. Context for the FY2027 plan, not a series — an activity partitions its project exactly in the request year, but can under-cover it in earlier years.
- Complete design and development of a multi-ton prototype capsule for demonstration of spacedrop, re-entry, and cargo deployment concepts for air/land/sea. - Complete modeling and simulation of the capsule re-entry aerodynamics, stability, heating, and technologies for rapid hypersonic deceleration. - Commence studies of capsule payload environments and survivability, from spacedrop to payload delivery. - Commence analyses of re-entry communications and plasma black-out.
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 0.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 30.6 |
| FY2027 | Request | 32.9 |
This activity is 12% of project 630320's FY2027 request and 12% of PE 0603032F'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.
14 activities in project 630320
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 program-element page.