What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 456 of PE 0603055D8Z. 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.
In FY 2027, OEM strengthens operational readiness and empowers warfighters to successfully execute missions by: • Golden Dome and High-Power Energy Requirements: Integrating directed energy component technologies into platforms and weapons systems, conducting power conditioning, increasing the domestic supply chain in support of advanced propulsion and energy storage of air platforms (including one-way kinetic effects), and advancing coupled thermal energy storage and advanced power controls for high-power applications • Securing Strategic Advantages: Improving Joint Force lethality by denying adversaries access to their own electrical infrastructure and advancing ability to harvest power from host infrastructure • Increasing Power Availability: Implementing aviation weight and drag reductions, advancing next-generation powerplants, efficient on-board power, wireless energy transfer, advanced energy electronics, and energy harvesting for extending mission endurance and preserving overmatch • Energy Extension: Leveraging advanced lithium-ion batteries to extend system-wide advantages through accurate, real-time battery health, life, and range assessment; enabling early fault detection and remediation; and providing echelon visibility through DoW systems to enhance operational planning and energy logistics management • Extending the Reach of Air Power: Advancing autonomous aerial concepts such as tankers, swarms, high-altitude balloons, and novel Uncrewed Aerial Systems, while applying innovative designs, composites, low-signature enhancements, and AI/ML flight management to achieve ultra-high endurance in contested environments • Tactical/Combat Platforms (Ground/Maritime): Enabling increased range, autonomous crewed/uncrewed platforms, interoperable charging, expanding intelligent power distribution with JADC2, ensuring modular adaptability for energy systems in contested environments; securing Tactical Micro-grid Standard adoption/integrations to enhance platform lethality, survivability, and thermal/acoustic management in combat conditions
The $2.260M program decrease limits technology maturation for resilient powered, and reduced acoustic signature, small boat providing coastal surveillance supporting defense of the homeland. Additional reductions due to congressional additions in FY 2026 not reflected in the 2027 request.
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.
OEM is committed to providing uninterrupted operational capabilities for the DoW, even in the face of energy supply disruptions. This commitment is achieved through the development and integration of innovative energy solutions across all platform types – fixed, mobile, autonomous, and crewed. OEM’s 49 active projects are focused on developing and transitioning technologies that directly support the Warfighter’s ability to maneuver, operate, survive, and be more lethal. The three FY 2026 new starts continue this focus by developing directed energy, and grid shaping and manipulation capabilities for the warfighters. In FY 2026, OEM is transitioning/closing 31 projects whose technologies and capabilities strengthen operational readiness, secure strategic advantages in complex conflict scenarios, and empower warfighters to successfully execute missions by: • Golden Dome and High-Power Energy Requirements: Innovating energy storage, power controls, energy-dense inverters, power distribution, and thermal management for radars, directed energy weapons, and other high-power applications • Energy Sustainment in Contested Logistics: Expanding Arctic battery and microgrid performance envelopes to –60C and expanding energy options for the warfighter in austere and contested regions • Mission Endurance and Interoperability: Extending resupply range and aircraft standoff distance through advanced aerial delivery systems, and ensuring interoperability of systems through microgrid standards • Enabling Advanced Maneuver, Lethality, and Survivability: Scaling autonomous platforms for refueling, reconnaissance, and decoy operations, advancing hybrid platforms to improve maneuverability, silent mobility, and endurance, and deploying modular and interoperable power systems for sharing exportable power in crewed/uncrewed teams • Extending the Reach of Air Power: Advancing aerial autonomous concepts such as tankers, swarms, high-altitude balloons, and novel Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS), while applying innovative designs, composites, low-signature enhancements, and AI/ML flight management to achieve ultra-high endurance in contested environments
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) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | Enacted | 39.8 |
| FY2027 | Request | 39.7 |
This activity is 100% of project 456's FY2027 request and 24% of PE 0603055D8Z'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.
1 activity in project 456
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.