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 Airframe Enhancements for Launched Effects Development will align with Congressional Intent and current Utility Helicopter Project Office (UHPO) requirements by focusing on the sensitivity analysis and design. This analysis will evaluate the overall design space for aircraft changes that will optimize aircraft Design Gross Weight (DGW) around future growth provisions, including envisioned technology insertion and Launched Effects (LE). This funding will continue to push the design efforts closer to Preliminary Design Review (PDR) and Critical Design Review (CDR) for the H-60M platform. The airframe structural enhancements effort is being accomplished in conjunction with the digital backbone 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.
FY2026 to FY2027 Funding increased due to continued development and integration of the modular nose upgrade, 24.5K structural enhancements, LE wing, and fuel cell expansion.
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 Airframe Enhancements for Launched Effects Development will align with Congressional Intent and current Utility Helicopter Project Office (UHPO) requirements by focusing on the sensitivity analysis and design. This analysis will evaluate the overall design space for aircraft changes that will optimize aircraft Design Gross Weight (DGW) around future growth provisions, including envisioned technology insertion and Launched Effects (LE). This funding will continue to push the design efforts closer to Preliminary Design Review (PDR) and Critical Design Review (CDR) for the H-60M platform. The airframe structural enhancements effort is being accomplished in conjunction with the digital backbone 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.
The Airframe Enhancements for Launched Effects Development will align with Congressional Intent and current Utility Helicopter Project Office (UHPO) requirements by focusing on the sensitivity analysis and design. This analysis will evaluate the overall design space for aircraft changes that will optimize aircraft Design Gross Weight (DGW) around future growth provisions, including envisioned technology insertion and Launched Effects (LE). This funding will continue to push the design efforts closer to Preliminary Design Review (PDR) and Critical Design Review (CDR) for the H-60M platform. The airframe structural enhancements effort is being accomplished in conjunction with the digital backbone 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 | 16.3 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 13.1 |
| FY2027 | Request | 14.2 |
This activity is 40% of project ES3's FY2027 request and 40% 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.