What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 773 of PE 0604133D8Z. 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.
Deliver capabilities from Pace Setting Projects to end users for immediate impact and further iterate CDAO will partner with National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and Defense Innovation Unit for the full AI/ML pipeline for Average True Range (ATR) model development. CDAO will focus on data ingest, labeling, and model and sim capabilities for enterprise use Align NIPR, SIPR, and JWICS compute capabilities with FY 2027 planned pilots Initial investment in classified commercial compute Prototype multi-cloud multi-model Frontier AI contract Prototype multi-cloud multi-model Frontier AI architecture
FY 2027 request reflects a significant increase from the FY 2026 levels due to funding of strategic priorities in support of Secretary of War strategic AI objectives as outlined in the AI Strategy. $363.1 million for: Cloud Compute for GenAI Applications supporting "AI for Every Desktop". This investment is crucial for acquiring the high-performance computing infrastructure necessary to develop and operationalize frontier AI models across the Department of War. Securing this funding directly enables the execution of the strategic AI objectives outlined in the USW (R&E)'s AI Strategy, ensuring the Department can set a commanding pace in technological superiority. Without this foundational compute capability, key initiatives like Ender's Foundry and GenAI.mil will be unable to scale, critically delaying the delivery of advanced AI tools to our warfighters and strategic planners. Therefore, this investment is not merely for hardware but is a direct enabler for maintaining a decisive strategic advantage and accelerating the integration of transformative AI across the force. $150 million for AI-Enabled Pilots to support Strategic Pace Setting Challenges. In response to Executive Order 14179 and the evolving character of AI-enabled warfare, the Department of War is launching an aggressive strategy to accelerate America's military AI dominance by becoming an "AI-first" fighting force. This initiative is spearheaded by seven initial Pace-Setting Projects (PSPs) for fiscal year 2026, which serve as high-speed exemplars for innovation across the department. In the Warfighting domain, these include (1. Swarm Forge) to competitively test new AI combat methods, (2. Agent Network) to unleash AI for battle management, and (3. Ender's Foundry) to advance AI-driven simulations. The Intelligence mission is advanced by (4. Open Arsenal), designed to turn intelligence into weapons in hours, and (5. Project Grant), which transforms deterrence into a dynamic, data-driven strategy. At the Enterprise level, (6. GenAI.mil) aims to democratize AI tools for all personnel, while (7. Enterprise Agents) will create a playbook for deploying AI to revolutionize workflows. The mission continues to evolve by emphasizing a "wartime footing" that prioritizes speed, competition, and the rapid removal of bureaucratic barriers. The strategy mandates that the department must maintain parity with the latest commercial AI models, enforce modular open architectures for easy upgrades, and adopt a "hard-nosed realism" approach to AI, ensuring models are objective and free from ideological constraints. This is a fundamental shift from merely integrating AI into old systems to completely re-imagining warfighting concepts, tactics, and processes as "AI-native," ensuring that the United States not only maintains but extends its lead in this critical technological race. $500 million in the FY 2027 mandatory request supports the evolving PSP mission.
FY2026: the year under way
Prior-year accomplishments and current-year plans from the same exhibit. Context for the FY2027 plan, not a series — an activity partitions its project exactly in the request year, but can under-cover it in earlier years.
Develop solutions in Warfighting, Intelligence and Enterprise through Pace Setting Projects Acquire, label, and deliver data to support priority autonomy requirements. Expand Mission and support and synthetic data generation capabilities and availability. Replicate data pipelines and labeling capabilities on classified networks. Pilot new data modalities and data fusion techniques to accelerate new model development. Grow use of enterprise data acquisition and labeling capabilities to service more DoW projects. Develop intake and assessment criteria for onboarding new pilots. Complete existing pilots and disseminate lessons learned or assist in transition planning in case of success. Enterprise purchasing of general use generative AI models for NIPR/SPIR /JWICS. Generative AI available cross multi cloud integration. Prototype generative AI solutions for warfighters, audit, and improving DoW efficiency.
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | Enacted | 395.9 |
| FY2027 | Request | 969.8 |
This activity is 100% of project 773's FY2027 request and 100% of PE 0604133D8Z'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.
1 activity in project 773
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.