What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project ACX-01 of PE 0603468E. 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.
- Initiate research approaches for technologies that enable decisive military effects at distances from the tactical to the strategic. - Explore new insertion routes and cost/fuel efficient range improvements. - Research technologies for pervasive persistence for observation and constant low-level engagement, supporting blue force and allies. - Evaluate life extension and upgrading existing systems with new technologies to confound adversary advances. - Explore novel engineering, technology, and systems approaches that have the potential to change the traditional calculus for military advantage. - Investigate low-cost mass/volume in quantity to overwhelm defense and deliver effects. - Explore decoy denial of service attack and new sensing modalities that change the game for defense operations. - Research capabilities to create doubt among adversaries and strengthen resolve of allies. - Further investigate other innovative ideas to disrupt adversary perceived advantages.
The FY 2027 increase reflects studies and concepts initiations including, but not limited to, the advancement of new technologies to enable pervasive persistence for observation and constant low-level engagement, to develop decoy denial of service attack and new sensing modalities, to evaluate life extension and upgrading of existing systems and to explore new insertion routes and cost/fuel efficient range improvements.
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.
- Explore and refine advanced platform concepts to deliver integrated, cross-domain dominance solutions at disruptive scale and unprecedented penetration capabilities. - Evaluate innovative architectures, operational concepts, and propulsion technologies spanning chemical rocket, airbreathing, and hybrid air vehicle systems to effectively counter and penetrate advanced Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) 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 | 0.1 |
| FY2027 | Request | 62.3 |
This activity is 12% of project ACX-01's FY2027 request and 12% of PE 0603468E'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.
14 activities in project ACX-01
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.