What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 63670A of PE 0603601F. 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 developing the technology trade space to enable air-to-air weapons with robust capability in the future threat environment, including technologies for efficient propulsion, long-range, high lethality, efficient flight, high agility, miniaturization, as well as cost and risk reduction for both offensive and defensive purposes. - Continue developing and testing propulsion systems to enable solid rocket motor performance at low-cost for significantly increased air-to-air weapon range and load-out. Activities include solid rocket motor design, build, and static tests. - Continue conducting lethality analysis and ground tests to enable design of small form factor warheads that create tradespace for other weapon components, enabling larger solid rocket motors for increased range. Activities include leveraging data from baseline warhead performance, directional fragmentation, and combined effects explosives. - Continue transitioning advanced target models to other Air Force and Department of War offices. Activities include improving joint used target models. - Complete developing preliminary design of air-to-air weapon concepts for sixth- generation platforms, maturing and demonstrating missile component technologies to increase range and agility. - Continue exploring and documenting missile flight dynamics trade space. Activities include focusing on maturing and demonstrating missile component technologies to increase range, loadout, lethality, and agility. - Stop conducting wind-tunnel experiments to characterize airframes and validate aerodynamic codes leading to development of highly maneuverable and efficient missiles to counter advanced targets and improve persistence and survivability of future platforms, enabling air-to-air engagements against highly maneuverable and evasive targets to employ fewer weapons per sortie. - Continue performing experiments with small warheads to obtain data for lethality analysis to validate and improve designs, focusing on maturing and demonstrating missile component technology to increase lethality. Activities include warhead design, development, build, and arena test. - Continue planning and executing integrated sub-system experiments, focusing on maturing and demonstrating missile component technologies to increase range, loadout, lethality, and agility. Activities include design, build, and test of modular sensor arrays and associated hardware. - Continue modeling, simulation, analysis, and digital engineering in support of air-to-air advanced weapon technologies, focusing on maturing and demonstrating missile component technologies to increase range, loadout, lethality, and agility. Activities include model-based systems engineering with SysML in Cameo or other relevant tools. - Resume conducting ground tests of advanced weapons carriages and prepare for flight worthiness testing, enabling significant increase of air-to-air weapons load-out. Activities include lugless carriage system design and weapon release testing.
FY 2027 funding increased by $19.912 million due to the transfer of the Air-to-Air Concept Development effort and associated funding within this Program Element from Project 63670B/ Weapon Concept Development to Project 63670A/ Weapon Technology Development. However, the overall funding for the Air-to-Air Concept Development decreased compared to FY 2026 by $0.753 million due to minor programmatic adjustments to the DAF Science and Technology portfolio.
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.
In the FY 2025 and FY 2026, the Air-to-Air Concept Development effort and funding were reported in Program Element 0603601F/ Conventional Weapons Technology/Project 63670B/Weapon Concept Development. FY 2025 funding was $23.553 million and FY 2026 funding is $20.665 million.
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 0.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 0.0 |
| FY2027 | Request | 19.9 |
This activity is 15% of project 63670A's FY2027 request and 15% of PE 0603601F'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.
4 activities in project 63670A
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.