What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 657009 of PE 1206442SF. 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.
Through Technology Maturation, Space Modernization Initiative (SMI) will continue to ensure the final components needed to meet Missile Warning/Missile Tracking (MW/MT) Enterprise-wide peak production demands for large format, resilient, high dynamic range infrared Focal Plane Arrays (FPAs) and protective filters and coatings for the FPAs. Advancing the FPA state-of-the-art is critical for space-based sensing and this thrust directly impacts manufacturability and cost reduction of sensors used in MW/MT Epochs and Space Development Agency (SDA) Tranches. Effort will involve higher resolution (8K X 8K) sensors for better tracking capabilities, supply chain resilience and domestic manufacturability, digital in-pixel Read Out Integrated Circuits (ROICs), and other advancements that provide increased capability and/or lower cost. The thrust will seek to transition developments into MW/MT Epoch 2 and inform Epoch 3 in order to merge various stovepipes of satellite tasking and inject event-based automation to the tasking architecture. This thrust will also be used to pursue activities that investigate the tasking and coordination of sensors across Space Systems Command (SSC), SDA, and Missile Defense Agency (MDA) assets. SMI will continue to propel emerging technologies to include more advanced hardened planar array antennas to meet the needs of Relay Ground Antenna (RGA) and Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) Survivable Endurable Evolution (S2E2), meta optics, edge computing tools, and novel phenomenology sensor development to meet threats posed by our pacing adversaries in FY 2030.
FY 2027 increased due to realignment of funds from the Demos thrust to the Tech Mat thrust to optimize mission investments.
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.
As the FY 2026 Technology maturation flagship investment, Space Modernization Initiative (SMI) will deliver the final components needed to meet Missile Warning/Missile Tracking (MW/MT) Enterprise-wide peak production demands for large format, resilient, high dynamic range Focal Plane Arrays (FPA) and protective filters and coatings for the FPAs. The thrust array will seek to transition developments for intelligent mission management into MW/MT Epoch 2 in order to merge various stovepipes of satellite tasking and inject event-based automation to the tasking architecture. Additionally, technology maturation will continue to propel emerging technologies to include meta optics, edge computing tools, and neuromorphic imaging in order to meet threats posed by our pacing adversaries in the FY 2030s.
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 | 35.2 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 10.9 |
| FY2027 | Request | 24.6 |
This activity is 14% of project 657009's FY2027 request and 12% of PE 1206442SF'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.
5 activities in project 657009
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.