What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 640141 of PE 0604003F. 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.
-Continue to fund and guide prototype capability development efforts. -Continue to establish required documentation, personnel, infrastructure, and pipeline resources to support transition of existing prototypes into a common baseline for continued development. -Deliver initial maritime mission thread minimum viable capability release to the warfighter for operational acceptance -Further mature maritime mission thread technology delivery to expand engagement capability envelope -Leverage initial technology delivery to refine modeling and simulation, demonstration of signal chain feasibility, continue infrastructure systems engineering and cybersecurity work, development of battle management microservices, and conduct of a technical readiness assessment in preparation for technology injection into a Joint Exercise and delivery to the warfighter. Activities will support declaration of a technically proven, initial air mission thread minimum viable product definition, and will be further developed for warfighter acceptance in FY 2028.
Funding will increase slightly in FY 2027 as DIFC2 will continue to mature automated functional applications for sensor tasking, track custody, processing of orders, battle management, and communications management to meet cybersecurity, testing, and integration work required for initial warfighter capability delivery. Further the program will integrate applications for a signal chain demonstration while ensuring software transferability to a scalable enterprise digital infrastructure. Additionally, DIFC2 will assess technical readiness of the integrated system as it prepares to contribute to a joint exercise, and ultimately initial delivery to the warfighter for acceptance.
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.
-Funding and guiding prototype capability development efforts to reduce technical integration risk. -Establish required documentation, personnel, infrastructure, and pipeline resources to support transition of existing prototypes into a common baseline for continued development. -In line with achieving operationally optimized advanced battle management systems / Air Force Joint All-Domain Command & Control (AF JADC2)) & defining the next generation air dominance (NGAD) system-of-systems, the DIFC2 program will continue to pursue modeling and simulation, demonstrate signal chain feasibility in a lab environment, conduct infrastructure systems engineering and cybersecurity work, develop battle management microservices, conduct a technical readiness assessment, and prepare technology for injection into a Joint Exercise. Activities will support declaration of a technically proven, initial maritime mission thread minimum viable product definition.
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 | 60.0 |
| FY2027 | Request | 72.8 |
This activity is 7.0% of project 640141's FY2027 request and 7.0% of PE 0604003F'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.
7 activities in project 640141
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.