What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 63665A of PE 0603203F. 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.
- Continue development of modes to be used on open architecture digital radio frequency arrays for future Air Force systems. - Continue work on a synthetic test environment (hardware in the loop/software in the loop) for evaluating digital radio frequency modes virtually without the need to conduct expensive flight testing. - Continue development of mission systems for autonomous collaborative platforms including radio frequency arrays and algorithms, electro-optical systems, and the necessary precision navigation and timing equipment to enable and optimize blue kill webs. - Commence examination of multi-domain sensing in the prosecution of air targets; study the impact and latency effects on operationally relevant scenarios. - Commence examination of algorithms and software architectures for autonomous mission sensing, sense making, and course-of-action determination.
FY 2027 increased compared to FY 2026 by $5.618 million due to increased emphasis on targeted radio frequency sensing bands. This increase reflects programmatic adjustments to the DAF Science and Technology portfolio for strategic realignment to optimize core research areas and improve resource efficiency.
FY2026: the year under way
Prior-year accomplishments and current-year plans from the same exhibit. Context for the FY2027 plan, not a series — an activity partitions its project exactly in the request year, but can under-cover it in earlier years.
- Commence development of modes to be used on open architecture digital radio frequency arrays for future Air Force systems. - Commence work on a synthetic test environment for testing digital radio frequency modes virtually without the need to conduct expensive flight testing. - Commence development of mission systems for autonomous collaborative platforms including radio frequency arrays and algorithms, electro-optical systems, and the necessary precision navigation and timing equipment to enable and optimize blue kill chains.
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 0.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 4.9 |
| FY2027 | Request | 10.5 |
This activity is 16% of project 63665A's FY2027 request and 15% of PE 0603203F'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.
5 activities in project 63665A
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.