What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project RD of PE 0603160BR. 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 Interferometric Synthetic-Aperture Radar (InSAR) analyses as potential new space-based treaty verification regime. - Complete prototype development of a nuclear detection ground debris measurement tool/capability, demonstrate the capability at a forensics exercise. - Integrate planning tools into Mission Impacts of Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Events software which model rubble and blown trees during a nuclear explosion. - Incorporate capability to model high altitude nuclear effects for nuclear weapon effects analyses in a web-based operational Nuclear, Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and high-Explosive (NCBRE) analytic decision support platform, NCBRE Analysis Toolset. - Develop a modular unmanned family of passive sensors providing a flexible and cost-effective solution to address a range of platform payload constraints. - Integrate Virtual Radiation Training through Ubiety System with the output of high-fidelity fallout models from hazard prediction and assessment capabilities to improve realism of planning tools. - Continue nuclear survivability testing in accordance with Military Standard-810G, to ensure DoW radiation sensors set the standard for reliability in harsh environments (e.g. maritime, arctic), including growing a product line of nuclear-survivable sensors. - Provide common core nuclear effects calculation engine, expanding to support Enhanced Consequence Analysis to close gaps identified in the Operations in Nuclear Environments Capability Based Assessment. - Achieve PITHON II e-beam and ion beam initial operational capability to provide nuclear survivability test capability to the DoW. RDT&E efforts to defeat Hardened and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) may include: - Enhance nuclear planning tools for HDBT, by turning models into software containers, perform software security and integration tests and conduct verification and validation. - Incorporate advancements in HDBT and Global Positioning System (GPS) denied technologies into multiple variants of Tactical Assault Kit to enable local and over-the-horizon control during operations. - Advance state of the art GPS-denied radiation mapping and imaging with a focus on complex and highly cluttered radiation environments present in some HDBT targets.
The change from FY 2026 to FY 2027 aligns priority spending with the Secretary of War’s highest priorities to strengthen readiness, modernize capabilities, and sustain the force. Reflecting the designation of DTRA as the Hardened and Deeply Buried Target -Defeat (HDBT-D) Enterprise Mission Lead, the Fiscal Year 2027 budget allocates increased funding for HDBT-D efforts and a realignment of resources from DTRA's O&M account to the RDT&E account to accelerate mission integration efforts in support of Operating in a Nuclear Environment (ONE).
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.
- Transition modular radiation detection systems to meet the needs of Explosive Ordinance Disposal, Special Operations Forces, National Guard Bureau, 20th CBRNE, and DTRA Technical Support Groups, while ensuring every system is interoperable with the widely used Tactical Assault Kit ecosystem. - Develop a modular unmanned family of passive sensors to provide a flexible and cost-effective solution to address platform payload constraints. - Perform Military Standard (MIL-STD)-810G testing to ensure DoW radiation sensors set the standard for reliability in difficult (e.g. maritime, arctic) environments, including growing a product line of nuclear-survivable sensors. - Start Phase 1 of the Satellite Systems Nuclear Survivability Protection Standard (SSNS-P) MIL-STD-3065 revision focusing on lessons learned from analysis of satellite survivability studies of various orbital regimes. - Conduct Phase 1 of the Satellite Systems Nuclear Survivability Design/Verification, Military Handbook (MIL-HDBK)-533 revision, drawing on and exploiting information gained from collaboration efforts with U.S. Space Command and U.S. Space Force and their acquisition program offices. - Complete impacts analysis of proliferated Mid-Earth Orbit and Geostationary Earth Orbit satellites nuclear survivability on conventional nuclear integration operations. - Deliver Mission Impacts of Nuclear Events support of the analysis and assessment of CCMD operation plans, course of action development, and concept of operations; incorporates initial space domain modeling for exo-atmospheric nuclear detection modeling and visualization, route planning capability for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) hazards, ground shock for underground impacts, and three-dimensional plume visualization. - Develop monitoring, verification, and other technologies/capabilities to support and prepare for future arms control requirements for increased arms-control negotiation options and more accurate and faster on-site treaty verification; complete Phase 1 design of radionuclide particulate system modernization for faster confirmation of covert nuclear test/operations; transition a persistent airborne nuclear weapon characterization capability, intended for operations in a nuclear environment as part of information resilience, to Air Force Technical Applications Center. - Provide common core nuclear effects calculation engine with expanded collateral damage estimates through Nuclear Capabilities Services. - Improve space nuclear effects capabilities, expanding to support Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications and DoD Instruction 3150.09 CBRN survivability analytic needs, for High Altitude Nuclear Effects. - Deliver MIL-STDs and handbooks that keep pace with threat, technology, and methodologies to ensure the warfighter has the tools necessary to develop a survivable strategic deterrent; provide test and evaluation support for Phase 3 of the Comprehensive Endo-/Exo-Atmospheric Nuclear Environment Standard revision; provide test and evaluation support for Phase 1 of the SSNS-P MIL-STD-3065 and Phase 1 of the Satellite Systems Nuclear Survivability Design/Verification MIL-HDBK-533 revisions; and updates to facility and aircraft standards to reflect changes in the EMP threat environment. - Integrate advanced human effects capabilities, fire spread modeling, and high altitude nuclear effects modeling into the Nuclear, Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and high-Explosive Analysis Toolset. - Deliver analysis and assessments of potential verification approaches from issues on ability to monitor space behaviors, international monitoring system architecture, advanced conventional weapons monitoring/accountability/verification and the applications of these concepts to both current treaties and/or future risk reduction measures. -Research the need for, and ability to conduct, a directed energy weapon survivability analysis against Strategic Systems, Defense critical capabilities, and Mission-Critical Systems.
- Deliver Mission Impacts of Nuclear Events (MINES) support of the analysis and assessment of Combatant Command (CCMD) operation plans, course of action development, and concept of operations to support mission impacts of nuclear detonations in the ground, air, maritime & space domains. - Complete testing of machine-language tool for component identification and expand artifacts reference dataset for foreign equipment inspections to support arms control inspections, verifications, and authentications. - Complete 3D models for topography effects on yield estimation and comparative data analysis for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command areas of interest; complete xenon integration into a multi-function atom-trap trace analysis system and testing for potential International Monitoring System integration. - Conduct space-based prompt diagnostics characterization preliminary design review and develop plan for component ground testing to provide relevant forensic data supporting attribution in the event of a nuclear attack. Model and simulate improvements to detector response for prompt data collection to support U.S. Prompt Diagnostics System mission and deliver improved ground debris collection capabilities. - Demonstrate interdependent infrastructure models using water, petroleum, and transportation with coupling to a significant nuclear weapons effect environment and deliver 14 new integrated or updated capabilities through Nuclear Capabilities Services (NuCS) 2025 for strategic contingency planning and damage estimation efforts. - Deliver moving receiver radiation dose, eye damage/flash blindness, source-region EMP, and radiation hardness standard computation tool to U.S. Army via Enhanced Nuclear Weapons Effects Database for maneuver planning and North Atlantic Treaty Organization support. - Deliver Military-Standards (MIL-STDs) and handbooks that keep pace with threat, technology, and methodologies to ensure the warfighter has the tools necessary to develop a survivable strategic deterrent; provide test and evaluation support for Phase 2 of the Comprehensive Endo-/Exo-Atmospheric Nuclear Environment Standard (CANES) revision. - Transition modular radiation detection systems to meet the needs of Explosive Ordinance Disposal, Special Operations Forces, National Guard Bureau, 20th Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and high-Explosive (CBRNE), and DTRA Technical Support Groups (TSGs), while ensuring every system is interoperable with the widely used Tactical Assault Kit (TAK) ecosystem. - Support end-user early operational assessments and transition activities to ensure radiation sensor prototype capabilities meet the minimum criteria to be inserted into a program-of-record or for direct procurement and develop an application programming interface to reduce time and cost of integration with Service and CCMD training tools. - Refresh Nuclear, Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and high-Explosive (NCBRE) Analysis Toolset Consequence Assessment user interface and integrate latest Linux version of the Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability to improve system performance; deliver updates to Comprehensive Nuclear Effects Model providing one canvas for all available nuclear effects calculations for CCMDs, Services, and DTRA Technical Reachback. - Enhance the historical nuclear testing archive at Defense Threat Reduction Information Analysis Center (DTRIAC). - Deliver verified water shock environment tool to U.S. Army and NuCS Team for seaport damage to support U.S. Army planners’ operations for nuclear environments. - Publish two updated nuclear weapons effects chapters for the Nuclear Weapons Effects Manual One. - Enhance the historical nuclear testing archive at the DTRIAC, - Modernize the Defense Stockpile Management System.
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 | 74.4 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 80.9 |
| FY2027 | Request | 94.9 |
This activity is 100% of project RD's FY2027 request and 19% of PE 0603160BR'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 RD
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.