Discovery, development, validation, and demonstration of integrated aerodynamic technologies that enable revolutionary capability for military air vehicles. This area seeks to discover and understand aerodynamic and fluid dynamic processes using foundations of theory, experiment, simulation, and analysis. This knowledge is then used to support the design, analysis and demonstration of new aerodynamic technologies and components, and their integration on military air vehicles.

Discovery, development, validation, and demonstration of improvements in cost, life, performance, and time to market of tomorrow’s military aircraft structures. Research and develop technologies to enable affordable yet capable limited life structures for attritable aircraft/weapon system concepts, including new approaches to airworthiness certification. Develop innovative structural concepts, materials and manufacturing methods that can dramatically reduce airframe weight and/or manufacturing cost for all classes of air vehicles. Explore concepts for multifunctional structures (electrical, thermal, power, etc.) for all classes of air vehicle. Understand structural aspects of morphing and adaptive structures that can eliminate the use of conventional articulated surfaces and enable multi-state flight performance optimization. For all applications, develop the accompanying models, structural test, and analysis methods, particularly with regard to their application to digitally-based aircraft structural design, certification and health monitoring / failure prediction.

Research, development, demonstration, and validation of technologies, approaches, or systems that will enhance the capability, performance, endurance, cost effectiveness manufacturability or reliability of propulsion systems for military applications. This could include, but is not limited to, high payoff engine concepts/systems and components with novel architectures, materials, and integrated thermal management. Systems to be considered include but are not limited to turbines, ramjets, scramjets, rotating detonation engines, solid/liquid fueled rockets, and hybrid systems.

Research, development, demonstration, and manufacturing that will enhance the capability, performance, endurance, or cost effectiveness of aerospace fluids. This could include but is not limited to fuel development for energy capacity/density, lubrication fluids for higher/lower temperature environments, and increased logistical supportability.

Technologies for aerospace power generation, energy storage, power distribution and power management, protection, and control. This includes, but is not limited to, affordable power generation, high impedance arc fault detection, wide temperature solid state batteries, EMI suppression techniques, and advanced power control to name a few.

Analysis, development, maturation and demonstration of aerospace technology concepts, at the subsystem or system level. Focus on technologies to improve reliability and/or cost and/or performance of electrical to mechanical energy transfer components as well as subsystem/system improvements in thermal acquisition, transport and rejection. Emphasis includes, but is not limited to fundamental thermal sciences, two-phase material applications, heat exchanges, hypersonic thermal systems, adaptive and hybrid thermal cycle systems, and hi-power, low duty cycle thermal management.

The objective of this research area is to develop and demonstrate innovative, affordable, and highly-manufacturable kill-chain technologies, enabling munitions and attritable uncrewed tactical airborne platforms to Find, Fix, Target, Track, Engage, and Assess (F2T2EA) targets.

Discovery, development, validation, and demonstration of navigation concepts, systems, and technologies including both relative and absolute positioning. Of interest are position, navigation, and timing architectures terminal weapons guidance, as well as novel navigation modalities.

Discovery, development, validation, and demonstration of integrated technologies that enable revolutionary capabilities for military air vehicles. Technologies include, but are not limited to, cooperative control of unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous air combat tactics, target pairing and operations, optimization under uncertainty, verification and validation of complex systems, weapons, high speed/hypersonic platforms, and aircraft flight control, thermal management, and fault tolerance.

Discovery, development, validation, processing, manufacturing and demonstration of effective ordnance. This includes but is not limited to development of explosive formulations to increase effectiveness and performance, alternate ordnance effects, fuzing technologies and initiation systems, case materials/structure, system integration, high fidelity system modeling and simulation, target lethality modeling and advanced experimentation systems and diagnostics for model validation. Additional topic of interest is the development of advanced scientific methods to leverage data and artificial intelligence for ordnance research.

Discovery, development, validation, and demonstration of methods and processes that integrate a wide range of disciplines at all levels of fidelity, including, but not limited to, aerodynamics, structures, thermal and power management, propulsion, controls, manufacturability, and cost—to optimize for system or system-of-systems military mission effectiveness. The inclusion of Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) methodologies is further desired to systematically

Discovery, development, validation, demonstration and conduct of multi-level modeling and simulation tools to rapidly evaluate the performance of advanced air superiority concepts, weapons, and aerodynamics in both system evaluation and complex combat scenarios.

Analysis, development, maturation and demonstration of advanced technology concepts, at the subsystem or system level. Of interest are both technologies integrated onto existing Air Force weapon systems as capability enhancements and into new systems as new capabilities to address current or projected warfighting shortfalls. Technologies may be applicable to air vehicles of all classes and speed regimes accomplishing any military mission germane to current, emerging or envisioned Air Force missions.