R-2A Activity · President's Budget PB2027

PTS Prototype Design and Development

FY2027 Request
$79.0M
▲ 219% vs FY2026
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This activity requests $79.0M in FY2027, 26% of project 643728, up 219% on FY2026. The R-2A exhibit describes it across FY2026–FY2027, including what the FY2027 money is planned to buy.

FY2027 Request
$79.0M
▲ 219% vs FY2026
FY2026 Enacted
$24.8M
▼ 64% vs FY2025
FY2025 Actual
$68.6M
Prior year
Planned work

What the FY2027 request buys

Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 643728 of PE 1206761SF. 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

Complete free flyer PTS prototype space vehicle to launch vehicle integration and provide launch support activities. Support satellite initial checkout for both PTS prototype vehicles and complete all post-launch On-Orbit Demonstration and Test (OODT) activities and support. Continue supporting existing PTS-P payloads with payload software and ground maturation, continue integration and testing, develop training materials, and support operational testing to enable early operational use opportunities of all PTS-P prototypes.

FY2026 to FY2027 change

Increase due to launch, on-orbit and OODT activities for both PTS hosted payload and free-flyer prototypes.

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

Complete both hosted payload and free flyer PTS prototype payload readiness and space vehicle to launch vehicle integration in preparation for launch in early FY2027. Continue to mature technology readiness levels of the system's critical technology elements. Rapidly respond to implement system resiliency and situational awareness necessary to demonstrate and test in the contested space domain. Other activities include program office support, studies, technical analysis, experimentation, risk reduction, and efforts that may leverage commercial, U.S. Government partnership, and international opportunities to respond to existing and emerging adversarial threats with speed and agility. Identify and begin implementation of prototype modifications required to enable early operational use of the prototype payloads.

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.

255075068.6FY25ACTUAL24.8FY26ENACTED79.0FY27REQUEST
Actual Enacted Request
Fiscal YearEstimate TypeAmount ($M)
FY2025Actual68.6
FY2026Enacted24.8
FY2027Request79.0

This activity is 26% of project 643728's FY2027 request and 18% of PE 1206761SF'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

8 activities in project 643728

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.

Enhanced PTS-Prototype$166.3M ▲ 31%
PTS Prototype Design and Development — this activity$79.0M ▲ 219%
PTS-P/R Ground Development$16.3M ▲ 60%
PTS-P/R Space Hub End Cryptographic Unit (ECU)$9.9M ▼ 12%
Technical Baseline Management, System Integration and Test Support$9.9M ▲ 103%
PTS-P Gateway Development$9.9M ▲ 106%
Protected Tactical Testbed$7.7M ▼ 10%
PTS Resilient$0.0M
Source
FY2027 Department of the Air Force RDT&E Budget Justification · Exhibit R-2A · PE 1206761SF, project 643728 (President's Budget PB2027). Congressional marks are recorded on the program element, never on an activity.
Machine access
Markdown twin /programs/1206761SF/643728/a0.md · MCP mcp.hitchintel.combudget_get_activity