What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 2568 of PE 0604840M. 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 and expand Agile development of capabilities through Developmental and Operational Flight Test. Continue requirements decomposition, preliminary design, and engineering and manufacturing development activities for advanced Block 4 capability improvements to Radar, Electronic Warfare, Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR), and Communication, Navigation, and Identification (CNI) sub-systems. Continue development and maturity of key long-lead capabilities and service unique weapons, enabling counter Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) strategies including increased payloads, joint integrated fires, passive weapons, interoperability improvements, and multi-spectrum dominance in response to near-peer threats . Continue and expand application of cyber resilience engineering processes and tools for software, hardware, and weapons, to achieve cyber survivability, verified through integrated cyber testing events. Continue development and timely delivery of software drops to meet warfighter need. Support efforts for airframe, air vehicle systems, mission systems, Future Capabilities and Technology (FCAT), weapons integration efforts, and Air-Ship integration, including Electro-Magnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Arresting Gear (EMALS-AAG) launch bulletins, and related work. Develop the Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) capability that provides increased range and effectiveness of the F-35, by providing improved and increased interoperability across joint platforms within a highly contested environment. Bolster support for Block 4 Capabilities and advance systems engineering efforts associated with integration of advanced weapons and aircraft stores to accelerate delivery to the warfighter. Continue systems engineering, integration, and test development for avionics, sensors, weapons, studies and analyses, and risk reduction efforts. Work will continue on Digital Core and development infrastructure efforts for support of an F-35 mission systems integration laboratory, F-35 digital twin models, and to resolve software deficiencies.
The increase from FY2026 to FY2027 is to enhance F-35 Block 4 improvements and capabilities, including Digital Core and Weapons integration, and to ensure air system alignment with fleet delivery.
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 and expand Agile development of capabilities through Developmental and Operational Flight Test. Continue requirements decomposition, preliminary design, and engineering and manufacturing development activities for advanced Block 4 capability improvements to Radar, Electronic Warfare, Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR), and Communication, Navigation, and Identification (CNI) sub-systems. Continue development and maturity of key long lead capabilities and service unique weapons, enabling counter Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) strategies including increased payloads, joint integrated fires, passive weapons, interoperability improvements, and multi-spectrum dominance in response to near-peer threats . Continue and expand application of cyber resilience engineering processes and tools for software, hardware, and weapons, to achieve cyber survivability, verified through integrated cyber testing events. Continue development and timely delivery of software drops to meet warfighter need. Support efforts for airframe, air vehicle systems, mission systems, Future Capabilities and Technology (FCAT), weapons integration efforts, and Air-Ship integration, including Electro-Magnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Arresting Gear (EMALS-AAG) launch bulletins, and related work. Develop the Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) capability that provides increased range and effectiveness of the F-35, by providing improved and increased interoperability across joint platforms within a highly contested environment. Bolster support for Block 4 Capabilities and advance systems engineering efforts associated with AARGM-ER, AGM-158 family of weapons, network enabled weapons, and increased air-to-air missile carriage to accelerate delivery to the warfighter. Modernize digital infrastructure for co-development and co-verification in a virtual environment in an effort to integrate hardware accurate emulations and the operating environments through advanced digital engineering. Evaluate feasibility and decompose requirements for integration of External Fuel Tanks to support long-range missions of the F-35. Continue systems engineering, integration, and test development for avionics, sensors, weapons, studies & analyses, and risk reduction efforts.
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 | 135.0 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 84.2 |
| FY2027 | Request | 162.8 |
This activity is 100% of project 2568's FY2027 request and 35% of PE 0604840M'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 2568
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.