The Pentagon on Wednesday disclosed additional capabilities selected for its Replicator initiative to get after fielding innovative technology rapidly at scale, which includes small drones from an Army program, loitering munitions and a new in-development Air Force drone.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said the “Replicator 1.2” tranche of capabilities also includes software to “enhance the autonomy and resilience of other Replicator systems” as well as additional “low-cost long-range strike capabilities and maritime uncrewed systems” that will remain classified.
“The Replicator initiative is demonstrably reducing barriers to innovation, and delivering capabilities to warfighters at a rapid pace,” Hicks said in a statement on Wednesday. “We are creating opportunities for a broad range of traditional and nontraditional defense and technology companies, including system vendors, component manufacturers, and software developers, to deliver critical capabilities that our warfighters need, and we are building the capability to do that again and again.”
Hicks first detailed the Replicator initiative in August 2023, with the initial effort focused on producing and fielding thousands of all-domain attritable autonomous systems (ADA2) by August 2025 “to help us overcome [China’s] biggest advantage, which is mass,” with the 1.2 systems also intended to meet that fielding timeframe (Defense Daily, Aug. 28 2023).
The Pentagon has not disclosed many specifics on Replicator and capabilities involved, while confirming in May it had started delivering initial systems and that AeroVironment’s [AVAV] Switchblade 600 was one of the capabilities chosen for mass production under the first tranche of the program (Defense Daily, May 23).
For both the first and tranches of equipment under Replicator to date, Hicks said the Pentagon considered more than 500 commercial firms for hardware and software contracting and “major subcontracting opportunities.”
Replicator 1.2 includes scaling up the Army’s new Company-Level small UAS program, in which the service has recently selected Anduril Industries’ Ghost X and Performance Drone Works’ (PDW) C-100 (Defense Daily, Sept. 12).
The Army first approved the company-level sUAS directed requirement in June 2023, which it has said previously aims to deliver “immediate, commercially available capability to meet operational requirements” for brigade combat teams” and the Pentagon added on Wednesday could be utilized for “reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition missions”
“Ukraine has demonstrated the value of small, attritable drones on the battlefield,” Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, said in a statement on Wednesday. “The delivery of commercially available Company Level Small UAS with support from the Replicator initiative will allow American soldiers to rapidly experiment, learn and innovate with these systems. The advancement of battlefield technology requires us to innovate faster than ever before.”
For the loitering munition, the Pentagon on Wednesday said its scaling up planned fielding and experimentation with Anduril’s Altius-600 system, which is currently part of the Marine Corps’ Organic Precision Fires program.
“Replicator is helping Marines experiment with a portfolio of systems that deliver organic, loitering, beyond-line-of-sight precision strike capability,” Gen. Eric Smith, commandant of the Marine Corps, said in a statement. “Expanded experimentation with these systems will inform future Organic Precision Fires efforts and enable refinement of our Force Design, concepts and doctrine.”
The Pentagon on Wednesday added the Altius-600 “complements” AeroVironment’s Switchblade 600, which was selected for the first tranche of Replicator.
“In many ways, Anduril was founded specifically to achieve the stated goals of the Replicator initiative: to accelerate the development, production, acquisition, and employment of large numbers of affordable, attritable autonomous systems. Across our business, we are delivering transformative, software-defined solutions at speed to ensure that warfighters have the capabilities they need, when they need them,” Anduril said in a statement on Wednesday.
Replicator 1.2 will also include the Air Force and the Defense Innovation Unit’s Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) program, which is currently assessing drone weapon prototypes from Leidos’ [LDOS] Dynetics, Anduril, Integrated Solutions for Systems, Inc. and Zone 5 Technologies (Defense Daily, June 3).
“The ETV’s modular design and open system architecture make it an ideal platform for program offices to test out new capabilities at the sub-system level, reducing risk, and demonstrating various options for weapon employment,” Gen. Jim Slife, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, said on Wednesday. “We are excited to be a part of Replicator 1.2 and to increase the speed of the ETV effort.”
For the software piece to Replicator 1.2, the Pentagon said it’s pursuing “integrated enablers” that would support “resilient decision-making architectures for collaborative autonomy teaming” and capability for “coordinating hundreds or thousands of unmanned assets in a secure shared environment.”
An announcement is forthcoming on DIU’s plans to use Commercial Solutions Openings to acquire the “integrated software enablers” for Replicator 1.2, according to DoD.
“Combining cutting-edge hardware with cutting-edge software — the capabilities and needs of each pushing the bounds of what is possible with the other — is at the heart of the very best of technology in the commercial sector,” DIU Director Doug Beck said in a statement. “Replicator is harnessing this same synergy, ensuring we can adopt commercial best practices to iteratively develop, test, and ultimately field autonomous systems, both individually and collectively, at scale.”
The Pentagon said in late September that it will focus on counter-drone technology for the subsequent “Replicator 2.0” effort (Defense Daily, Sept. 30).