# Project AET-01 — ADVANCED C4 SYSTEMS

**Program element:** 0603469E — Advanced Enabling Technologies  
**Project:** AET-01  
**Component:** Defense-Wide  
**Appropriation:** 0400 — RDT&E, Defense-Wide  
**Budget Activity:** 3 — Advanced Technology Development  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603469E/AET-01  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603469E

## Summary

Project AET-01 — ADVANCED C4 SYSTEMS requests $32.5M in FY2027, 9.8% of the $331.0M requested for program element 0603469E, up 5.3% on FY2026. 5 R-2A activities decompose the request.

## Funding profile

| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 0.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 30.9 |
| FY2027 | Request | 32.5 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 97.2 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 110.0 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 114.9 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 127.1 |

> Estimate types are not summed. This project is one leaf of PE 0603469E; the PE total is the sum of its projects, never added to them.

## What project AET-01 buys

The Advanced C4 project develops and demonstrates technologies that will provide effective communications, information integration, and decision support to U.S. forces. The success of military operations depends on timely, reliable, secure, and synchronized dissemination of command and control and relevant situational awareness information to every military echelon. Technologies are intended to support highly distributed crewed, uncrewed, and human machine teams in all domains and across the entire spectrum of conflict, specifically end-to-end kill chains. While leveraging advancements in commercial technology development, novel approaches promote adaptability, resilience and reliability to overcome environmental challenges while countering a highly capable and dynamic adversary. Prior to FY 2026, efforts in this Project were funded in PE 0603760E, Project CCC-02.

## Activities (R-2A) — 5

| Activity | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 | Move | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advanced C4 Systems Studies and Concepts | — | 4.1 | 32.0 | +686% | [a1](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603469E/AET-01/a1) |
| DARPAVERSE | — | 5.5 | 0.5 | −90% | — |
| Generating Communications Channels to Operate (GeCCO) | — | 11.5 | — | −100% | — |
| Space domain Wide Area Tracking & Characterization (Space-WATCH) | — | 6.4 | — | −100% | — |
| Strategic Chaos Engine for Planning, Tactics, Experimentation and Resiliency (SCEPTER) | — | 3.4 | — | −100% | — |

> Activities carry the prior, current and budget year only — no five-year plan. In the request year they partition this project exactly; in earlier years they can under-cover it.

### Advanced C4 Systems Studies and Concepts

- Investigate fully homomorphic architecture for secure artificial reasoning on platforms in the field. - Develop planning capabilities with artificial intelligence to support operational preparation. - Conduct design study on impacts to integration with current mission planning software. - Investigate forward-looking, machine-driven…

Full year-by-year narrative: https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603469E/AET-01/a1

### DARPAVERSE

**FY2027 planned work.** - Transition DARPAVERSE technology.

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** The FY 2027 decrease reflects the shift from development to technology transition.

**FY2026 plans — current year.** - Develop generalized and composable methods of automatic reduced order model development from existing models. - Enable artificial intelligence aided definition and orchestration of custom multi-model environments with a single operator.

### Generating Communications Channels to Operate (GeCCO)

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** The FY 2027 decrease reflects program completion.

**FY2026 plans — current year.** - Continue development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) to test and validate integrated network services and network architecture. - Demonstrate network services and architecture with transition partners in operationally representative scenarios. - Assess technical compatibility and ability for third parties to independently integrate framework into both complementary and transition partner systems.

### Space domain Wide Area Tracking & Characterization (Space-WATCH)

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** The FY 2027 decrease reflects program completion.

**FY2026 plans — current year.** - Improve data processing and fusion capabilities. - Transition operational capability for real-time situational awareness.

### Strategic Chaos Engine for Planning, Tactics, Experimentation and Resiliency (SCEPTER)

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** The FY 2027 decrease reflects program completion.

**FY2026 plans — current year.** - Finish development of the SCEPTER technologies for use in demonstrations and transition it to U.S. Government stakeholders.

## What is NOT on this page

Congressional marks, the R-2 mission description and acquisition strategy, the industry vs government split of the whole request, and related program elements are recorded at **program-element** grain — an NDAA mark lands on a PE, never on a project. They are at https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603469E.

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Office of the Secretary of Defense RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibits R-2/R-2A/R-3, PE 0603469E project AET-01 (PB PB2027).
- **MCP:** `mcp.hitchintel.com` — `budget_get_program_element(pe="0603469E")`.

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