What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project ES3 of PE 0607136A. 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.
The Utility Helicopter Project Office (UHPO) will continue to work the development of the Scalable Digital Backbone with focus on the open standard hardware and software components supporting the modularity, portability, and commonality required to meet U.S. Army MOSA objectives. This effort will support the development of the Product Baseline System Model (PBSM), which includes the Software Requirements Specifications, Component Initial Capabilities Document (ICD), Component Interface Design Description (IDD), Software Design Description, Database Design Description, and Component Interface Requirements Specifications. The plan also includes the integration of Strategic Autonomous Flight Enabler (SAFE). Funding will continue to move the DBB closer to Preliminary Design Review (PDR) and Critical Design Review (CDR) for the H-60M platform. The digital backbone effort is being accomplished in conjunction with the airframe structural enhancements in support of H-60 modernization.
FY2026 to FY2027 Funding increased due the additional integration of SAFE. The continued development and integration efforts will lead to multiple Technical Interchange Meetings (TIMs), a System Requirements Review (SRR), System Functional Review (SFR), PDR and CDR.
FY2025–FY2026: what came before
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.
The Utility Helicopter Project Office (UHPO) will continue to work the development of the Scalable Digital Backbone with focus on the open standard hardware and software components supporting the modularity, portability, and commonality required to meet U.S. Army MOSA objectives. This effort will support the development of the Product Baseline System Model (PBSM), which includes the Software Requirements Specifications, Component Initial Capabilities Document (ICD), Component Interface Design Description (IDD), Software Design Description, Database Design Description, and Component Interface Requirements Specifications. Funding will continue to move the DBB closer to Preliminary Design Review (PDR) and Critical Design Review (CDR) for the H-60M platform. The digital backbone effort is being accomplished in conjunction with the airframe structural enhancements in support of H-60 modernization.
The Utility Helicopter Project Office (UHPO) will continue to work the development of the Scalable Digital Backbone with focus on the open standard hardware and software components supporting the modularity, portability, and commonality required to meet U.S. Army MOSA objectives. This effort will support the development of the Product Baseline System Model (PBSM), which includes the Software Requirements Specifications, Component Initial Capabilities Document (ICD), Component Interface Design Description (IDD), Software Design Description, Database Design Description, and Component Interface Requirements Specifications. Funding will continue to move the DBB closer to Preliminary Design Review (PDR) and Critical Design Review (CDR) for the H-60M platform. The digital backbone effort is being accomplished in conjunction with the airframe structural enhancements in support of H-60 modernization and includes a sensitivity analysis to understand key drivers for modernization capabilities and integration with legacy components within the aircraft.
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 | 5.8 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 9.8 |
| FY2027 | Request | 19.9 |
This activity is 57% of project ES3's FY2027 request and 57% of PE 0607136A'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.
3 activities in project ES3
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.