# Project 097 — Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Test

**Program element:** 0603941D8Z — Test and Evaluation Science and Technology  
**Project:** 097  
**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/0603941D8Z/097  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603941D8Z

## Summary

Project 097 — Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Test requests $44.0M in FY2027, 1.1% of the $3.83B requested for program element 0603941D8Z, up 1.1% on FY2026. 1 R-2A activity decomposes the request.

**Markets:** Uncrewed & Autonomy — matched on the project title only, and no market size is quoted.

## Funding profile

| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 16.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 43.5 |
| FY2027 | Request | 44.0 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 47.4 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 48.4 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 49.3 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 50.3 |

> Estimate types are not summed. This project is one leaf of PE 0603941D8Z; the PE total is the sum of its projects, never added to them.

## What project 097 buys

The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) brings a host of revolutionary capabilities that will profoundly influence warfare, and bring special challenges for testers of Artificial Intelligence systems. The Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Test (AAIT) project addresses current and emerging challenges associated with the test and evaluation (T&E) of unmanned systems, particularly in testing autonomy, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. As such, AAIT is developing test technologies to simulate, stimulate, instrument, measure, and assess an autonomous system’s ability to perceive its environment, process information, adapt to dynamic conditions, make decisions, and effectively act on those decisions in the context of mission execution. AAIT will provide the test technologies to effectively measure performance and characterize risk, thereby increasing warfighter trust in autonomous systems and artificial intelligence tools. This program will improve the Department’s test capabilities and methodologies to address the testing of increasingly autonomous units operating in unstructured, dynamic, battlespace environments. Furthermore, advancements are being made in developing collaborating, system-of-autonomous-systems that will work in concert as a swarm or pack, and in close proximity with humans. New test technologies are needed to stress the collective set of autonomous systems under realistic conditions, predict emergent behavior of autonomous systems, emulate the complex environment, and assess mission performance of these highly coupled and artificially intelligent systems.

## Activities (R-2A) — 1

| Activity | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 | Move | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Test | 16.0 | 43.5 | 44.0 | +1% | [a0](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603941D8Z/097/a0) |

> 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.

### Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Test

- Deliver mission scoring framework for specific mission scenarios - Assess mobile experimental infrastructure services - Increase multi-Service AI test and evaluation support to include AI testbeds capable of assessment of commercially developed AI software - Assess and develop distributed command and control (C2) experimentation

Full year-by-year narrative: https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603941D8Z/097/a0

## 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/0603941D8Z.

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Office of the Secretary of Defense RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibits R-2/R-2A/R-3, PE 0603941D8Z project 097 (PB PB2027).
- **MCP:** `mcp.hitchintel.com` — `budget_get_program_element(pe="0603941D8Z")`.

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