What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 635280 of PE 0603680F. 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.
- Commence the development of domestic sources of advanced batteries including higher energy and power densities, and resilience to extreme environments. Activities include: -- Development of secondary batteries capable of high discharge rates (greater than 10 C-rate), high-energy density (over 350 watt hours per kilogram), and extreme cycle-life (more than 10,000 duty cycles) for Department of Air Force (DAF) specific needs in directed energy, electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL), Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS), and for space applications. -- Improved manufacturing and performance of solid-state electrolytic cells, enabling broader temperature battery operation and reduced thermal management for space applications. -- Improved separator and electrolyte formulation for lithium-sulfide (Li-S) cells, ensuring performance at low temperatures. -- Improved cell seal manufacturing processes to improve warfighter safety, mitigate asset damage and prevent failure under extreme transport environments. - Commence the development and prototyping of munition environment tolerant secondary and primary reserve batteries to meet program of record identified mission requirements in hypersonic and air-to-air missiles, to include low-cost next generation thermal and reserve architectures for affordable mass. Activities include: -- Development of prototype ruggedized Li-ion cells capable of surviving air launched environments and perform from -40 to 65 degrees Celsius for more than 500 cycles with an energy density greater than 250 watt hours per kilogram. -- Development of thermal battery prototypes capable of meeting identified Size, Weight and Performance (SWAP) requirements for HACM and future air-launched missiles, including extended active lifetimes, novel activation architectures, and extreme temperature resilience. -- Development of prototype batteries capable of integration into weapon structural elements for improved SWAP, and contribution to secondary effects for munitions and sUAS. - Commence research into battery safety science to meet DAF-specific test and certification requirements. Activities include: -- Development of hardware- and software-in-the-loop architectures to test battery performance and safety for improved testing reliability, to drive analysis with predictive models, and to formalize a clear process for criteria-based certification. -- Development of platform agnostic electrical and thermal models for safety event risk analysis and development of DAF-specific safety tests and protocols to enable faster certification and fielding of advanced battery technologies. -- Development of advanced predictive health and performance monitoring algorithms to provide warfighters real-time information on battery performance, capability and safety. - Commence the development of standard modular batteries for aviation and flightline missions to enable agile combat employment, secure domestic supply chains, and enable rapid fielding of advanced energy storage technologies. Activities include: -- Development of prototype designs for common, scalable, modular aviation batteries with scalable voltage from 28 volts (V) to greater than 540V, with standard electrical and mechanical interfaces, modular packaging methodologies, and standardized performance profiles. -- Delivery of initial preliminary designs for modular flightline batteries, including power architectures, packaging, and environmental, safety and cyber requirements. - Commence the manufacture and technology development for DAF-identified munitions power needs for extended flight durations, increased power processing and improved lethality. Activities include: -- Improved legacy and novel thermal and reserve battery architectures including headers, packaging, active materials formulations, and advanced power processing to improve baseline and surge manufacturing capacities. -- Improved technology and manufacturing of Silver-Zinc, and alternative chemistries to support munition sustainment including securing domestic manufacturing lines, increased quality and capacity, and the development of alternative drop-in replacement chemistries to combat diminishing sources.
Funding in FY 2027 increased by 53.600 million compared to FY 2026 due to increased focus on domestically sourced batteries, and advanced battery manufacturing and technologies for primary and reserve batteries to meet the DAF-specific requirements for operating in extreme environments and reserve power requirements.
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.
Not applicable.
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 | 53.6 |
This activity is 54% of project 635280's FY2027 request and 54% of PE 0603680F'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 635280
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 program-element page.