What the FY2027 request buys
Verbatim from the R-2A exhibit for project 650014 of PE 1206855SF. 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.
ESS Space segment will complete all final design trades and reviews to complete space contractor Critical Design Review. After completion, ESS will enter Space Assembly Integration & Test (AI&T) and will begin integration activities to include ECUs into SVs and initial configuration testing. Further, ESS will continue SV payload emulator and Flatsat development and engineering design to support early integration with ESS ground C2 and existing strategic user terminals. Finally, ESS will continue any additional needed NRE. Significant classified facilities and lab testing efforts will occur to validate parts purchases and integration to meet nuclear communication requirements. SV1 and SV2 will begin initial assembly and production once all parts are tested and validated. New and updated manufacturing lines will be stood up at contractor and subcontractor facilities for ESS production. Begin work for initial test campaign plan with 4 Test and Evaluation Squadron and external test stakeholders to create plan for Operational Test and Acceptance. The ESS program will also continue software development for the payload and bus flight software and continue building digital twins to support the ESS digital engineering ecosystem. The digital engineering ecosystem is critical for design and integration risk reduction activities prior to building ESS space vehicles. Ancillary activities will involve starting or continuing special studies for survivability, resiliency, risk reduction, and architectural trades. Rapidly respond to implement system resiliency and situational awareness necessary to operate in the contested space domain. Activities may include, but are not limited to program office support, studies, technical analysis, experimentation, risk reduction, prototyping, resiliency tech insertion, and activities that may leverage commercial, U.S. Government partnership, and international opportunities to respond to existing and emerging adversarial threats with speed and agility.
FY 2027 increased due to completion of major technical and manufacturing milestones for SV1 and SV2. Complete critical hardware buys for SV1 and SV2 to include full assembly and parts integration into a functional vehicle for launch. Long lead parts will be tested for compliance and reliability for payload emulator as well as final integration into SVs for Hardware in the Loop Testing and space worthiness testing. SV assembly and resiliency requirements drive need for classified testing labs and facilities. The ESS system of systems Critical Design Review requires surge labor and engineering to finalize production ready designs for approval and integration. SV prototype test assets and simulators need to be purchased to support the Ground Segment to meet accelerated IOC timeline. Buys down risk related to ESS SoSI with space and ground milestone Assembly, Integration and Test events. This is the key integration event to validate working systems and interfaces between SV, crypto, and Ground C2 terminals. Space Development and Production transitioned to BA 05 Project 650014 in 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.
(Project 643725 BA 04) Continue significant Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) activities covering essential engineering, process documents, and building engineering models of flight hardware to lead up to a unit and system level critical design reviews (CDRs) in FY 2027. Additional NRE activities include developing and integrating auxiliary payloads, designing the ESS Payload Emulator and supporting SoSI activities with the ESS ground and crypto vendors. ESS is an extremely complex system of systems. The ESS space, ground, and crypto vendors will need to collaborate further to update and refine interface control documents, communication protocols, and software imaging formats. The program will procure additional critical hardware items necessary for the build and test of space vehicles (SVs) 1 and 2. The ESS SV vendor will continue developmental test activities with a crypto engineering development model (EDM) to reduce integration risk with the payload ECU. This activity will enable the successful integration of ESS crypto production representative articles (PRAs) in FY 2026. The ESS program will also continue software development for the payload and bus flight software and continue building digital twins to support the ESS digital engineering ecosystem. The digital engineering ecosystem is critical for design and integration risk reduction activities prior to building ESS space vehicles. Ancillary activities will involve starting or continuing special studies for survivability, resiliency, risk reduction, and architectural trades. Rapidly respond to implement system resiliency and situational awareness necessary to operate in the contested space domain. Activities may include, but are not limited to program office support, studies, technical analysis, experimentation, risk reduction, prototyping, and activities that may leverage commercial, U.S. Government partnership, and international opportunities to respond to existing and emerging adversarial threats with speed and agility. Space Development and Production transitioned from BA 04 Project 643725 in FY2026 to BA 05 Project 650014 in FY 2027
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) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | Enacted | 0.0 |
| FY2027 | Request | 1,266.9 |
This activity is 100% of project 650014's FY2027 request and 69% of PE 1206855SF'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.
1 activity in project 650014
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.