R-2A Activity · President's Budget PB2027

Space Environment Research

FY2027 Request
$17.6M
▼ 27% vs FY2026
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This activity requests $17.6M in FY2027, 60% of project 621010, down 27% on FY2026. The R-2A exhibit describes it across FY2026–FY2027, including what the FY2027 money is planned to buy.

FY2027 Request
$17.6M
▼ 27% vs FY2026
FY2026 Enacted
$24.1M
▲ 5.2% vs FY2025
FY2025 Actual
$22.9M
Prior year
Planned work

What the FY2027 request buys

Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 621010 of PE 1206601SF. 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.

FY2027 planned work

Continue: -Executing joint roadmap with the Military Application of the Space Environment (MASE) program at Space Systems Command. -Collaborating with Canada to advance ionospheric specification in support of indications and warning and coordinate registration for Over the Horizon Radar. -Executing joint field experiments and studies under the Disturbed Ionospheres Trilateral Partnership Agreement (PA) between the United States, Great Britain and Australia. -Exploitation of Space Experiment data in support of e.g. Radiation Belt Remediation technology development. -End to end simulations of High Altitude Nuclear Explosion (HANE) events in support of Radiation Belt Remediation technology development. -Analyzing data from field experiments. -Supporting and developing technologies aligned to Space Warfighting Analysis Center and Space Systems Command Capability Collaboration Team tech needs as well as those supporting the Department of the Air Force priorities, e.g. situational awareness and communication in contested environments; edge sensing and sensemaking; and space environment Common Operating Pictures. -Foundational work and support for national roadmaps related to Space Environment capabilities, i.e. National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan, Combat Forces Command, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Air Combat Command, Air Force Weather, Department of Commerce, etc. -Invention and development of space based environmental monitoring sensors to include Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) composition and density. Complete: -Transition of Sounder Receiver (SoRcer) Enabled Ionospheric Modeling (SEIM) software components to Military Application of the Space Environment (MASE). Commence: -Assessment of indications and warning (I&W) for chemical releases in space and near-space environments.

FY2026 to FY2027 change

FY 2027 decreased by $6.549 million compared to FY 2026 due to decreased in-house research supporting Space Environment.

Before the request year

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.

FY2026 plans — current year

Continue: -Executing joint roadmap with the Military Application of the Space Environment (MASE) program at Space Systems Command. -Developing Over the Horizon Radar propagation specification work and move into more stressing environments, i.e. Equatorial and High Latitude. -Collaboration with the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, to execute relevant field experiments and develop specification models with utility for operational systems. -Supporting and developing technologies aligned to Space Warfighting Analysis Center and Space Systems Command Capability Collaboration Team tech needs as well as those supporting the Department of the Air Force priorities, e.g. situational awareness and communication in contested environments; edge sensing and sensemaking; and space environment Common Operating Pictures. -Collaboration with Canada on high-latitude ionospheric specification and field experiments. -Pursuing field experiments and demonstrations related to ionospheric modification. -Invention and development of space based environmental monitoring sensors. -Supporting Space Systems Command to optimize the utility of their operational space environment sensor and capabilities in support of Department of War mission. -Foundational work and support for national roadmaps related to Space Environment capabilities, i.e. National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan, Combat Forces Command, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Air Combat Command, Air Force Weather, Department of Commerce, etc. -Work in support of predictive space environment capabilities that protect and enable Department of War and National missions. -Trilateral collaboration with United States, Great Britain and Australia to understand the utility of ionospheric specification for Radio Frequency applications and the impacts of naturally and artificially produced ionospheric modifications. -Stand up of a Cislunar and Radiation Belt Remediation research team to support Cislunar activities, pursue additional outcomes from the previous mission, and continue to develop options for future flight experiments. Complete: -Roadmap for support of the Homeland Defense Arctic Over the Horizon Radar program out of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. -Sounder Receiver (SoRcer) Enabled Ionospheric Modeling (SEIM) Joint Capability Technology Demonstration.

Money

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.

022.9FY25ACTUAL24.1FY26ENACTED17.6FY27REQUEST
Actual Enacted Request
Fiscal YearEstimate TypeAmount ($M)
FY2025Actual22.9
FY2026Enacted24.1
FY2027Request17.6

This activity is 60% of project 621010's FY2027 request and 7.5% of PE 1206601SF'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.

Where this sits

2 activities in project 621010

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.

Space Environment Research — this activity$17.6M ▼ 27%
Strategic Radiation Hardened Electronics$11.8M ▼ 6%
Source
FY2027 Department of the Air Force RDT&E Budget Justification · Exhibit R-2A · PE 1206601SF, project 621010 (President's Budget PB2027). Congressional marks are recorded on the program element, never on an activity.
Machine access
Markdown twin /programs/1206601SF/621010/a0.md · MCP mcp.hitchintel.combudget_get_activity