Updated to reflect the federal government's August 2026 National Security Science & Technology Strategy update(opens in new tab)
- Advanced additive manufacturing beyond prototyping, especially for metals, ceramics, and large-scale structures
- Smart manufacturing and use of digital threads and digital twins
- Nanomanufacturing
- Materials by design utilizing AI and autonomous development and production
- High entropy alloys
- Advanced composites and lightweight metals
- Materials with novel, tailored, and improved properties, including biomaterials and substitution of rare-earth or critical minerals-based alloys with earth-abundant minerals
- Perception, recognition, and sensor fusion
- Planning, reasoning, and decision-making
- Robotics and embodied intelligence
- Foundation models, including large language, multimodal, and world systems
- Multi-agent systems and swarm intelligence
- Autonomous systems for surface, air, maritime, space, and cyber domains
- Autonomous command and control
- Autonomous agent identification and authentication
- Interpretability and control
- Adversarial robustness and AI security
- Techniques to enable next-generation AI systems, such as continual learning
- Distributed and privacy-preserving machine learning
- Novel synthetic biology including nucleic acid synthesis; genome and epigenome engineering; protein design, synthesis, and engineering; and computational modeling
- Engineering of sub-cellular, multicellular, multi-scale, cell-free, and viral systems
- Novel therapeutic design and manufacturing
- Biotic/abiotic interfaces and novel materials
- Biomanufacturing and bioprocessing technologies
- Neurotechnologies
- Future generation wireless networks
- Optical links and fiber technologies
- Spectrum access technologies
- Software-defined networking and radios
- Modern data exchange techniques
- Adaptive network controls
- Resilient and path-diverse communications, including delay-tolerant and infrastructure-independent networking, adaptive waveforms, and space and stratospheric modalities
- Lasers
- High-power microwaves
- Particle beams
- Advanced and next-generation computing architectures
- Photonic, neuromorphic, and other non-Von Neumann computing modalities
- High-performance supercomputing, including for AI applications
- Edge computing and devices for tactical environments
- Brain-computer interfaces
- Enabling technologies for high security computing
- Hardened operating systems for consumer use
- Advanced spatial computing
- Propulsion
- Aerodynamics and control
- Materials, structures, and manufacturing
- Testing
- Detection, tracking, characterization, and defense
- Data management, including storage and security
- AI-enabled and autonomous cyber capabilities
- Distributed ledger technologies and digital assets
- Digital identity technologies and biometrics
- Computing supply chain security and assurance
- Communications, network, and cyber-physical systems security
- Post-quantum cryptography
- Operational technology and industrial control system security and resilience
- In-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing as well as enabling technologies
- Technology enablers for cost-effective on-demand, and reusable space launch systems
- Technologies that enable access to and use of cislunar space and/or novel orbits
- Sensors and data analysis tools for space-based observationsÂ
- Space propulsionÂ
- Advanced space vehicle power generation
- Novel space vehicle thermal management
- Crewed spaceflight enablers
- Resilient and path-diverse space communication systems, networks, and ground stations
- Space launch, range, and safety technologies
- Advanced fission reactors
- Fusion energy
- Space nuclear power and propulsion systems
- High-temperature and radiation resistant materials
- Diversified PNT-enabling technologies for airborne, space-based, terrestrial, subterranean, and underwater settings
- Interference, jamming, and spoofing detection
- Disruption/denial-resisting and hardening technologies
- Chip-scale frequency standards, inertial sensors, and atomic clocks
- Quantum computing
- Quantum sensing
- Quantum communications and networking
- Enabling components, algorithms, materials, and fabrication techniques
- Design automation tools
- Advanced manufacturing process technologies and equipment
- Beyond complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology
- Heterogeneous integration and advanced packaging
- Specialized hardware components for AI, RF and optical applications, elevated radiation environments, high-power devices, and other critical applications
- Novel materials for advanced microelectronics, including 2D materials
- Microelectromechanical and Nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS)
- Integrated photonics
- Advanced sensors and sensor systems, including distributed apertures
- Data processing and fusion
- Adaptive optics
- Detection and characterization of pathogens and of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and threat materials
- Cost-effective on-demand and reusable space launch
- Advanced space vehicle power generation and propulsion
- Novel space vehicle thermal management
- Access to and use of cislunar space and novel orbits
- In-space aggregation and assembly
- Biotechnologies for space applications
- Crewed spaceflight enablers