What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 625018 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.
Continue: -Developing sophisticated techniques to detect, identify, track, characterize, and catalog satellites using multi-phenomenology sensing with particular focus on space situational awareness for novel and challenging orbits. -Science & Technology feeding flight experiments that will demonstrate utility of cislunar situational awareness for establishing and transferring custody, tracking, and deterring threats from deep space. -Studies to inform upgrades to operational tools used in space situational awareness. -Development of on-orbit threat warning sensing and assessment using on-board satellite sensors. -Research on cyber vulnerability and cyber hardening methods of space assets with laboratory testbeds, developing standards and techniques. -Demonstration of cyber hardening techniques aboard on-orbit experiments through established pipeline of flight experiments. -Developing on-board autonomous satellite technologies, emphasizing operational resilience and tactical action, awareness across operator ground and space interfaces, enabling tactical awareness for distributed system elements, and many-to-many engagements plans for next generation flight experiments. -Developing on-board autonomous satellite techniques, enabling Dynamic Space Operations by using resilient in-space maneuver, refueling & rendezvous proximity operations for space control and defensive CONOPs. -Experimentation and exercises with Department of War ground architectures, operations centers, commercial and international partners. -On-orbit experimentation with cyber resilience, reactive protection, and autonomous defense capabilities. -Exploration of spacecraft Electronic Support Measures (ESM) Research & Development. -Exploration of space Electronic Warfare (EW) research & development for all space warfighting orbital domains. -Studies, assessments, and engineering trades to support spectrum resilience via radio frequency sensing to support multi- satellite, multidomain spectrum dominance.
FY 2027 increased compared to FY 2026 by $1.919 million due to transitions to Combat Forces Command (CFC) and increased exercises with DoW, commercial, and international partners.
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.
Continue: -Developing sophisticated techniques to detect, identify, track, characterize, and catalog satellites using multi-phenomenology sensing with particular focus on space situational awareness in the cislunar environment. -Science & Technology feeding flight experiments that will demonstrate utility of cislunar situational awareness for establishing and transferring custody, tracking, and deterring threats from deep space. -Studies to inform upgrades to operational tools used in space situational awareness. -Development of on-orbit threat warning sensing and assessment with emphasis on spectrum awareness and inherent, on-board satellite sensors. -Research on cyber vulnerability and cyber hardening methods of space assets with laboratory testbeds, developing standards and techniques. -Demonstration of cyber hardening techniques aboard on-orbit experiments through established pipeline of flight experiments. -Developing on-board autonomous satellite technologies, emphasizing operational resilience for tactical action, awareness across operator ground and space interfaces, enabling tactical awareness for distributed system elements, and many-to-many engagements plans for next generation flight experiments. -Developing on-board autonomous satellite techniques, enabling Dynamic Space Operations by using resilient in-space maneuver, refueling & rendezvous proximity operations for space control and defensive CONOPs. -Experimentation and exercises with Department of War ground architectures, operations centers, commercial and international partners. -On-orbit experimentation with cyber resilience, reactive protection, and autonomous sensing capabilities -Exploration of spacecraft Electronic Support Measures (ESM) Research & Development. -Studies, assessments, and engineering trades to support spectrum resilience via radio frequency sensing to support multi- satellite, multidomain spectrum dominance. Complete: -Integration and testing of multiple cyber resilience, reactive protection, and autonomous sensing capabilities into on-orbit demonstrations.
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 | 23.2 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 23.2 |
| FY2027 | Request | 25.1 |
This activity is 51% of project 625018's FY2027 request and 11% 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.
2 activities in project 625018
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.