What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 645601 of PE 1206427SF. 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.
Complete development of the optical space terminals, conduct functional and performance testing of the terminals on the government testbed at MIT/LL, conduct environmental testing on the terminals, and continue development of the Space Data Network C2 System.
FY 2027 decreased by $20.637 million due to planned completion and delivery of the optical communication terminal prototypes in 3Q FY 2027.
FY2026: the year under way
Prior-year accomplishments and current-year plans from the same exhibit. Context for the FY2027 plan, not a series — an activity partitions its project exactly in the request year, but can under-cover it in earlier years.
Funds were erroneously transferred to PE 1203609SF and will be realigned back for execution towards: - Continued development of optical communication terminal prototypes through Other Transaction Agreements and fund development, testing, and maintenance of the Optical Terminal Verification Testbed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory (MIT/LL). - Developing interface controls and integration plans in preparation for a space-based prototype demonstration. Mature networking management of optical crosslink terminals in partnerships with other organizations.
Three years, and no five-year plan
An R-2A activity publishes the prior year, the current year and the budget year. The FYDP outyears exist at project and program-element level and are deliberately absent here rather than inferred. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 53.3 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 40.7 |
| FY2027 | Request | 20.1 |
This activity is 23% of project 645601's FY2027 request and 23% of PE 1206427SF'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 645601
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.