# Advanced Systems Studies and Concepts

**R-2A activity** of project DAT-01 — ADVANCED SYSTEMS  
**Program element:** 0603467E — DARPA Advanced Technology Development  
**Component:** Defense-Wide · **Budget Activity:** 3  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603467E/DAT-01/a10  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603467E/DAT-01

## Summary

This activity requests $178.7M in FY2027, 44% of project DAT-01, up 122% on FY2026. The R-2A exhibit describes it across FY2026–FY2027, including what the FY2027 money is planned to buy.

## What the FY2027 request buys

**FY2027 planned work.** - Initiate research approaches to acquiring new defense systems, including disrupting systems engineering and reimaging test and certification. - Develop new design approaches to make manufacturable designs or to dramatically reduce human engineering effort. - Develop new approaches to fabrication that enable rapid start-up, reduced production lead times, and frequent changes to military systems. - Test and validate approaches that dramatically shorten the timeline from initial delivery to full military utility. - Explore tools and processes enabled by automation to actively manage engineering uncertainty. - Accelerate fixture development enabled by physics-informed modeling. - Explore methods to accelerate analytics, decision-making, authoring, testing and certification enabled by Large Language Model (LLM) based automation. - Investigate ways to develop a game-play engine and reinforcement learning techniques to support course of action (COA) development. - Define simulation scenarios for COA inputs. - Demonstrate game-play engine and course of action (COA) generation for surrogate operational vignettes. - Integrate higher level intelligence products in COA generation engine. - Investigate new technologies for capturing space debris to include robotics, propulsion and remote pilot operation systems. - Determine feasibility of integrating novel technologies into spacecraft architecture and mission concepts and how to enable rapid deployment of spacecraft.

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** The FY 2027 increase reflects studies and concepts initiations including, but not limited to, the advancement of new technologies to capture space debris, new tools and processes to actively manage engineering uncertainty, and novel processes and architectures to enable the rapid manufacture and deployment of spacecraft.

## Before the request year

**FY2026 plans — current year.** - Develop new methods of design space exploration that redefine system architectures, provide new insights into higher order interactions, and enable tailored testing. - Initiate research that enables seamless cross-domain communications into, within, and out of contested environments. - Initiate research into a program to demonstrate a semi-autonomous platform that provides sensing, tracking, targeting, and engagement capability. - Develop platforms for sub-domain access to enable novel access and operational envelopes. - Explore and refine advanced system concepts to deliver integrated, cross-domain platform autonomy at disruptive scale and unprecedented penetration capabilities. - Explore automated advanced sensing systems that leverage multi-modal computer vision and can be deployed on uncrewed vehicles and with squad sized warfighting units. - Explore concepts to provide a low-cost, easy-to-integrate, large-scale national infrastructure sensing system. - Examine concepts and technology to prevent the impacts, degradation and disruption of port operations. - Investigate rapid and ad hoc mechanisms for dynamic, composable, and adaptable uncrewed swarm systems.

## Funding

| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | Enacted | 80.4 |
| FY2027 | Request | 178.7 |

> Prior, current and budget year only — an R-2A activity carries no five-year plan. It sums exactly into its project in the request year and not necessarily in any other.

## Other activities in project DAT-01

- [Advanced Propulsor, Experimental (APEX)](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603467E/DAT-01/a0) — FY2027 73.4
- Midway — FY2027 39.6
- [Embedded Entrepreneurship Initiative (EEI)](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603467E/DAT-01/a1) — FY2027 25.0
- [Archer](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603467E/DAT-01/a2) — FY2027 20.8
- [Box Kick](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603467E/DAT-01/a9) — FY2027 20.0
- [Pulling Guard](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603467E/DAT-01/a3) — FY2027 19.9
- Deep Thoughts — FY2027 15.8
- Time-definite Capability Delivery — FY2027 8.0
- Resilient Supply-and-Demand Networks (RSDN) — FY2027 4.1
- FLexible networking Using Intelligent Dialecting (FLUID) — FY2027 2.0
- Goblin — FY2027 —
- No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) — FY2027 —
- Scorpionfish — FY2027 —
- Trenton — FY2027 —
- Willow — FY2027 —

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Office of the Secretary of Defense RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibit R-2A, PE 0603467E project DAT-01 (PB PB2027). Narrative is the government's own text.
- **No marks, no contractors at this grain** — congressional marks land on the program element and R-3 performers on the project.
- **MCP:** `mcp.hitchintel.com` — `budget_get_activity`.

*HitchAI is an independent intelligence service, not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense. Budget figures are requests/estimates, not obligations.*