Assistance program
Air Force Defense Research Sciences Program
$6.4 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Dept of the Air Force, Dept of Defense
- Assistance
- Project Grants (Cooperative Agreements)
- CFDA number
- 12.800
- What it does
- To maintain technological superiority in the scientific areas relevant to Air Force needs; to prevent technological surprise to our nation and create it for our adversaries; to maintain a strong research infrastructure composed of Air Force laboratories, industry, and universities; and to complement the national research effort.
- Who benefits
- Private/public educational institutions; other private/public nonprofit organizations which are operated primarily for scientific, educational, or similar purposes in the public interest, and commercial concerns.
- Who applies
- Private/public educational institutions; other private/public nonprofit organizations which are operated primarily for scientific, educational, or similar purposes in the public interest, and commercial concerns.
- Authorized by
- 10 U.S.C. 2358
- Program site
- http://www.af.mil ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
How the money flows
Committed dollars by how this program's money is paid out.
Grants
$5.5B
87%
Other
$811.9M
13%
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments