What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 123 of PE 0603142D8Z. 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.
• Perform and scale a variety of Joint Force Integration mission engineering analyses and studies aligned with Key and Joint Operational Problems and critical warfighting missions. These efforts identify technologies and capabilities that enable Combatant Command Operational Plans and operationalize the Joint Warfighting Concept (JWC), directly supporting the MEIA. • Maintain and develop new Joint Mission Engineering Threads (METs)—or "Kill Webs"—to inform the design, development, and interoperability of Joint-level capabilities, concepts, and technologies, and to guide systems integration. • Continue to lead the Mission Engineering Working Group and improve the practice of Mission Engineering.
Decrease in FY 2027 RDT&E, DW due to program adjustments to realign funds to department priorities.
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.
• Enable and support the establishment of the new DoW Mission Engineering and Integration Activity (MEIA) as part of the SecWar and DepSecWar Joint Requirements Reform mandate. • Continue and scale the implementation of Mission Engineering to guide the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering’s investment portfolio. Operational scenarios will explore a variety of mission areas across different geographical regions—including USINDOPACOM, USEUCOM, USSPACECOM, and USNORTHCOM—and all domains to identify technologies that close capability gaps and inform requirements, prototypes, experimental design, and concept transitions. Areas of focus for these studies will include Battlespace Management, Joint Command and Control, counter-C5ISRT, counter-unmanned systems, Sensors and Non-Kinetic Effects, Joint Fires, and Unmanned/Multi-Domain Autonomous operations. • Maintain and develop new Joint Mission Engineering Threads (METs)/“Kill Webs” to inform broad, Joint-level capability, concept, and technology design, as well as to guide broader force-level systems integration. • Engage with the Analytic Community to advance the state of practice for Mission Engineering, emphasizing information sharing and collaboration with industry partners. This engagement will leverage commercial and private research initiatives to address extant operational gaps. • Establish new MITs and the MEIA Mission Capability and Analysis Teams (MCAT) to enable cross-collaboration and joint integration on mission engineering activities across the Department.
• Increase Mission Engineering analyses and studies that explore a variety of critical scenarios and KOPs across different geographical regions and domains to identify technologies and capabilities that close capability gaps, and inform requirements, prototypes, design of experiments, and transition of concepts. Focus areas include Joint Force Integration for Counter-C5ISRT, APNT focused in USEUCOM Area of Operation (Burden Sharing), Joint Force Integration for Unmanned Systems, and Defense of the Homeland (Golden Dome for America). • Continue to develop digital and reusable Joint Mission Engineering Threads (METs)/ “Kill Webs” to analyze system-of-systems within an operational scenario and produce results that inform capability and technology design and integration considerations. • Continue to engage with the Analytic Community to advance the state of practice of Mission Engineering; and foster relationships across the community to share data and results that inform leadership decisions on identification, resourcing, and transitioning of technologies and capabilities that close capability gaps. • Continue to increase collaboration with industry partners through establishment of unfunded Memorandums of Agreement through a Broad Other Transaction Announcement to share information on relevant scenarios and missions for analytical purposes that lead to the identification and evaluation of R&D initiatives that address operational gaps.
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 | 15.1 |
| FY2027 | Request | 13.6 |
This activity is 100% of project 123's FY2027 request and 9.4% of PE 0603142D8Z'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 123
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.