The Pentagon has selected both currently-deployed systems and newer capabilities that have not yet been operationalized for its Replicator initiative to field thousands of attritable autonomous systems by August 2025, a lead official said Thursday.
“What Replicator is about is taking the absolute best technology that we have, whether it is shovel ready and already in place or it’s something that might be a little bit newer, but in all cases we’ve got to be able to leap frog ahead to that 18-24 month objective that [Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks] laid out,” Doug Beck, director of DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.
While the Pentagon has not publicly named the specific systems it has initially picked for Replicator yet, Beck responded “all of the above” when asked by Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) whether DoD selected capabilities already out in the field or ones that have not been deployed.
Hicks first announced the Replicator initiative last August, detailing the effort to produce and field thousands of “all-domain attritable autonomous systems, or ADA2 capabilities, over the next 18 to 24 months “to help us overcome [China’s] biggest advantage, which is mass” (Defense Daily, Aug. 28 2023).
Aditi Kumar, DIU’s deputy director for strategy, policy and national security partnerships, confirmed last month that DoD remains on track to meet its timeframe to field Replicator capabilities between February to August 2025 and has been briefing Congress on its plans (Defense Daily, Jan. 24).
Kumar also said at the time the department may not publicly reveal all of the capabilities it’s including in the Replicator initiative.
Beck on Thursday said DoD has made “tremendous progress” on Replicator today and reiterated the department “is not moving” on its goal for fielding within 18-24 months from the initial announcement.
“It’s not moving because we’re not moving it. And it’s not moving because, more importantly, the adversary is not moving their timeline on things,” Beck said.
Hicks in late January provided a rundown of what DoD has accomplished with Replicator since the initial announcement, which has included identifying operational needs from the combatant commands, selecting the types of capabilities the department will pursue to meet those needs, developing acquisition strategies and analyzing the resources required to deliver those capabilities.
Beck noted the Pentagon is now working on selecting the second tranche of capabilities for Replicator and has officially delivered a reprogramming request to Congress to help fund the initial group of systems.
“That’s the department getting after sorting through how we can best help make these things happen as fast as possible. Obviously, we need an [FY ‘24] budget for the continued-on pieces of that,” Beck said.