Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Notable · Needs Congress

Create funding outside the PPBE process and a "fast track" for emerging technologies

Partially done

96 4. Department of Defense

“Develop legislation or other means of providing funding outside the traditional PPBE process for the prototyping and experimentation of emerging technologies that are deemed essential to modernization and future conflict. Consider creating a "fast track" for projects that satisfy the most pressing national security needs.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The FY2027 President's Budget (published April 2026) asks Congress for $350 billion in further mandatory resources for the Department of War, saying in terms that "the mandatory funding protects key priorities such as providing flexibility in maturing technology for delivery and allowing for acquisition approaches for portfolios of capabilities that broaden opportunities for new entrants." That is the Quote's mechanism, proposed at scale; it is a request, and the mechanism it would extend is already partly in place.

  2. Partially done

    Public Law 119-21 title XX appropriates mandatory defense money available through 30 September 2029 and outside the annual PPBE cycle, including $650 million for Mission Capabilities Office joint prototyping and experimentation, $1 billion to expand programs that accelerate the procurement and fielding of innovative technologies and $2 billion for Defense Innovation Unit scaling of commercial technology. A funding route outside the traditional process now exists; no statutory "fast track" for the most pressing needs was created.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

The instrument turned out to be the reconciliation act rather than a standalone bill: Public Law 119-21 put multi-year mandatory money into prototyping and experimentation outside the annual Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution cycle, and the FY2027 Budget asks Congress to do it again on a much larger scale.

One negative search covered this item and its cluster of neighboring asks.

Action
create
Object
funding mechanism outside the PPBE process
ID
144