What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 633151 of PE 0603605F. 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 base defense demonstrations of Directed Energy Frontline Electromagnetic Neutralization and Defeat (DEFEND) system in collaboration with the Navy. Activities include: Demonstrating of full kill chain in testing; Work with warfighters to develop CONOPS, CONEMPS, and TTPs. - Continue design effort of airborne HPM systems. This work will focus on the counter missile and counter unmanned aerial systems (c-UAS) mission. Activities include: conformal antenna design, build, and test; HPM source packaging to reduce size, and weight. - Continue HPM antenna design efforts for base defense and airborne applications. Activities include: foldable antennas to measure the technical performance parameters. The antenna will lead to greater system range while not increasing size or setup time of the system. - Continue efforts to increase HPM output power while reducing logistical and maintenance requirements. Activities will focus: on reducing the size of systems to maintain lethality while obtaining compliance with the Air Force Agile Combat Employment doctrine. The objective is to meet the lethality and capability of DEFEND in 33% of the footprint. - Commence development of a fully mobile, fire-on-the-move counter-UAS HPM capability. Activities include: HPM integration into a vehicle platform. - Commence live operational baselining of counter-UAS. Activities include: Deploying additional system; transitioning system out of the lab to a program executive office.
FY 2027 increase of 10.321 million is due to the transfer of the High Power Microwave Technologies effort and associated funding from Project 633152. The overall funding for High Power Microwave technologies increased from the FY26 PB of 4.383 million by 5.938 million, supporting high-fidelity,multi-physics modeling for optimizing laser weapon system designs and commencing development of mobile fire-on-the-move counter-UAS capabilities and live operational baselining of counter-UAS systems.
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 High Power Microwave Technologies effort and funding were reported in Program Element 0603605F / Advanced Weapons Technology, Project 633152 / High Power Microwave Development and Integration. FY 2025 funding was $27.161 million and FY 2026 funding is $16.783 million.
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 0.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 0.0 |
| FY2027 | Request | 10.3 |
This activity is 75% of project 633151's FY2027 request and 75% of PE 0603605F'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.
2 activities in project 633151
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.