RDT&E Project · President's Budget PB2027

CH-53K Improvement

Project 3069·PE 0605212M — CH-53K·U.S. Navy·BA5
FY2027 Request
$139.3M
▲ 2.8% vs FY2026
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Project 3069 — CH-53K Improvement requests $139.3M in FY2027, 100% of the $139.3M requested for program element 0605212M, up 2.8% on FY2026. 2 R-2A activities decompose the request. NAWCAD is the largest named R-3 performer at $45.5M, 33% of the project's FY2027 R-3 total.

MarketsAircraft & Aero Components (mfg)Rotary & Vertical Lift

Matched on this project's title. A title match, not a curated taxonomy — narrative-only matches are not shown at all rather than shown with a caveat nobody reads. No market size is quoted here: a market spans appropriations far beyond this program element.

FY2027 Request
$139.3M
▲ 2.8% vs FY2026
FY2026 Enacted
$135.4M
▲ 159% vs FY2025
FY2025 Actual
$52.2M
Prior year
Project detail

What project 3069 buys

CH-53K Improvement is required for the establishment of the Heavy Lift program's organic test and evaluation efforts, software development, follow-on capability enhancements, and modernization initiatives. These efforts are focused on advancing the program's technical maturity, validating system performance, and ensuring alignment with operational requirements. Improvements address pre-planned product improvement requirements written into the Capabilities Product Document approved by Joint Requirements Oversight Committee in February 2020. The CH-53K Improvement projects provide near and long-term improvements to the fleet, focusing on documented deficiencies related to mission systems, maintainability and reliability, and obsolescence issues.

R-3 lines of work
  • Product Development
  • Support
  • Test and Evaluation
  • Management Services
Funding trajectory

Project 3069 funding, FY2025–FY2031

Prior years are actuals, the budget year is the request, and the outyears are the FYDP plan. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure. Projects carry the full five-year plan; the activities inside them stop at the budget year.

255075100125052.2FY25ACTUAL135.4FY26ENACTED139.3FY27REQUEST95.0FY2891.6FY2992.6FY3094.2FY31
Actual Enacted Request Outyear (FYDP)
Fiscal YearEstimate TypeAmount ($M)
FY2025Actual52.2
FY2026Enacted135.4
FY2027Request139.3
FY2028Outyear95.0
FY2029Outyear91.6
FY2030Outyear92.6
FY2031Outyear94.2
Inside the project

2 accomplishments / planned programs

The R-2A exhibit — the only level of the budget that describes work that has not happened yet. Activities carry the prior, current and budget year only, no five-year plan. Each describe FY2027 work in enough detail to have their own page; the rest are shown here in full. Coverage is partial across the corpus, so count activities, never total them.

FY2025 actual$10.5M
FY2026 enacted$90.5M
FY2027 request$71.8M

Continue efforts to develop, test, and certify new capabilities, to include software development and mitigation of risk due to obsolescence of components to support fleet and production aircraft requirements. Specific activities planned in support of the Improvements program include: further air vehicle envelope expansion, increased…

Read the FY2027 plan →
FY2025 actual$41.7M
FY2026 enacted$44.9M
FY2027 request$67.5M

Continue and maintain the establishment of the government Test and Evaluation team, and associated support functions, to facilitate follow-on capability expansion and development of new requirements. Efforts supported include pre-planned product improvements, reliability improvements, risk reduction software development, and testing…

Read the FY2027 plan →
Who's building it

Named performers on project 3069

Performers named in the R-3 exhibit under this project. Share is of the project's whole FY2027 R-3 total — the same denominator the program-element split uses, so the two read on one scale and will not sum to 100% when unnamed or government work is in the mix. Budget-justification contract funding, not obligations.

NAWCAD
$45.5M · 33%
Sikorsky
$19.2M · 14%
GE
$3.8M · 2.7%
COMOPTEVFOR
$2.0M · 1.5%