What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 673503 of PE 0604840F. 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 support Integrated Test capacity and flight test execution (including manpower, weapons, flight hours, range time, and chase, target & tanker support assets) to develop and verify and test capabilities as directed by the F-35 JPO. Major program testing includes Block 4 weapons integration, integrated system evaluations, multi-ship operations, and mission effectiveness evaluations. Continued funding for Development Test Aircraft Modification broken out from the rest of the Development activities. Funding will also procure Developmental Test (DT) Kits. This is continued support from FY2026 for Developmental Test (DT) aircraft modifications to ensure test-ready and operationally-representative. Continuing to support flight test capacity and flight test execution. This includes first increment testing through initial and fully operational increments. The funding will be used for continuing to develop and test incrementally, for new software releases and deficiency fixes.
When considering the FY2027 mandatory funding in addition to discretionary funding, the funding increase from FY2026 to FY2027 is due to additional test site infrastructure and operating costs associated with multiple concurrent software development lines as well as additional weapons system and other Block 4 capability testing. Additionally, the increase accounts for procurement of additional hardware modification kits for the DT fleet.
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.
Continue to support Integrated Test capacity and flight test execution (including manpower, weapons, flight hours, range time, and chase, target & tanker support assets) to develop and verify and test capabilities as directed by the F-35 JPO. Major program testing includes Block 4 weapons integration, integrated system evaluations, multi-ship operations, and mission effectiveness evaluations. Continued funding for Development Test Aircraft Modification broken out from the rest of the Development activities. Funding will also procure Developmental Test (DT) Kits. This is continued support from FY25 for Developmental Test (DT) aircraft modifications to ensure test-ready and operationally-representative. Continuing to support flight test capacity and flight test execution. This includes first increment testing through initial and fully operational increments. The funding will be used for continuing to develop and test incrementally, for new software releases and deficiency fixes.
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 | 36.7 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 36.3 |
| FY2027 | Request | 38.8 |
This activity is 14% of project 673503's FY2027 request and 3.4% of PE 0604840F'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.
5 activities in project 673503
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.