# Project 353 — DIANA

**Program element:** 0603945D8Z — International Innovation Initiatives  
**Project:** 353  
**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/0603945D8Z/353  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0603945D8Z

## Summary

Project 353 — DIANA requests — in FY2027, 0.0% of the $158.3M requested for program element 0603945D8Z, down 100% on FY2026. 1 R-2A activity decomposes the request.

## Funding profile

| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 0.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 37.5 |

> Estimate types are not summed. This project is one leaf of PE 0603945D8Z; the PE total is the sum of its projects, never added to them.

## What project 353 buys

To combat the evolving threat and development of critical technologies, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) to leverage dual-use technological advances in Allied centers of innovation to achieve the Alliance’s operational requirements, including accelerating the development, testing, and fielding of security technology solutions to achieve an advantage over the evolving threat. The NATO DIANA program only provides non-traditional business partners from Alliance nations with funding to accelerate new technical solutions and commercialization specifically where the technology holds a dual use (commercial and defense in nature) potential. Advanced development and testing to facilitate adoption into U.S. defense programs requires supporting funding for our own labs and test centers to pull that technology into our Defense acquisition ecosystem. This project enables the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (OUSW(R&E)) to assist in accelerating military capability development for U.S. forces as well as our NATO Allies and will expose new U.S. industries to the European markets. Fielding of critical technologies in the proposed areas will have significant positive impact on detecting the enemy first, ensuing effective communications and data exchange between coalition partners, as well as systems developed by different original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and enabling robotic and autonomous systems to remain on station longer periods of time for greater operation impact. NATO DIANA advances access to technology across larger security challenges. These enhancements will contribute to increasing lethality across the U.S. and NATO military capabilities. The NATO DIANA initiative will fund dual-use technologies identified through the NATO DIANA challenges found sufficiently mature with the potential for meaningful impact for U.S. forces on the battlefield for continued development, testing, integration, and experimentation and proposes to fund each technology for capability maturation.

## Activities (R-2A) — 1

| Activity | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 | Move | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) | 0.0 | 37.5 | — | −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.

### Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA)

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** The decrease of $37.507 million from FY 2026 to FY 2027 is due to an internal funding realignment within the Critical Technologies portfolio. This funding increase supports high-priority DoW research for AHI (PE 0603375D8Z Technology Innovation - Anomalous Incidents Research).

**FY2026 plans — current year.** Fund evaluation of dual-use technologies identified through the NATO DIANA 2024-2025 challenge problems found sufficiently mature with the potential for meaningful impact for U.S. forces on the battlefield for continued development, testing, integration, and experimentation and proposes to fund each technology for capability maturation. Each identified technology investments will be supported by mission and operational analysis, due diligence assessment, testing, and productization to assess the viability of the proposed technical approach and the mission impact of the technology in relevant operational scenarios; to assess the risks associated with the selected technology companies prior to investment, from both an adversarial risk perspective and from a financial risk perspective, as well as continue to monitor adversarial interest and engagement in selected technology companies post-award; to establish and quantify measures of performance and measures of effectiveness for the capability prototypes as they mature, to include through participation in operationally relevant demonstration environments; and to further mature qualified prototype capabilities for commercialization and operational use.

**FY2025 accomplishments.** This project will annually fund dual-use technologies identified through the NATO DIANA challenges found sufficiently mature with the potential for meaningful impact for U.S. forces on the battlefield for continued development, testing, integration, and experimentation and proposes to fund each technology for capability maturation. These technologies will be identified under challenges based on a strategic direction developed with input from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. Each of the identified technology investments will be supported by end-to-end enablers, including mission and operational analysis, due diligence assessment, testing, and productization. Mission and operational analysis will assess the viability of the proposed technical approach and the mission impact of the technology in relevant operational scenarios. Due diligence assessment will assess the risks associated with the selected technology companies prior to investment, from both an adversarial risk perspective (e.g., foreign ownership, control, and influence) and from a financial risk perspective, as well as continue to monitor adversarial interest and engagement in selected technology companies post-award. Testing and evaluation will establish and quantify measures of performance and measures of effectiveness for the capability prototypes as they mature, to include through participation in operationally relevant demonstration environments. Lastly, productization will further mature qualified prototype capabilities, which sufficiently meet the measures of performance and effectiveness thresholds, for commercialization and operational use.

## 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/0603945D8Z.

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Office of the Secretary of Defense RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibits R-2/R-2A/R-3, PE 0603945D8Z project 353 (PB PB2027).
- **MCP:** `mcp.hitchintel.com` — `budget_get_program_element(pe="0603945D8Z")`.

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