Department of Defense to pick Replicator drones by mid-December

Drone companies with working ties to the US Department of Defense should find out by mid-December if their craft are among those selected for the first developmental tranche of the Pentagon’s Replicator program, which looks to match the enormous weapons systems of countries like China and Russia with the power-in-numbers might of swarms of smaller UAVs.

Department of Defense Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks said choices of drones for the initial work in Replicator will be finalized in early December. She added, however, that there’d be no public announcement on the decision or detailing which companies will be involved. She also stressed UAVs selected would come from small craft already involved in Pentagon development or deployment programs, which include Teal and Skydio and larger systems by AeroVironment, Honeywell, and others.

The objective, she noted, will be to identify drones already in Department of Defense projects that are adaptable to and rapidly scalable for inclusion in Replicator planning initially envisaged for the Indo-Pacific Command. Hicks said that by re-adapting existing Pentagon work with those UAV partners for the kinds of mass swarm scenarios involved, there would be no need for major new funding requests until 2025.

When it was announced in August, Replicator was described as a fast-moving and -adapting strategy to offset the military advantages that China, in particular, enjoys. It seeks to offset what Hicks described as Beijing’s mass of “more ships, more missiles, more people” through the US relying on “smart concepts and smart technology” in the form of air, sea, and land drones deployed for specific military objectives.

To do that, the Department of Defense will draw from the evident lessons of Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion. To that end, Replicator will focus on innovative and unexpected ways of using a range of relatively inexpensive, adaptable, and effective drones that can be created and deployed in large numbers as “attritible” craft – that is, those either not intended to or with little chance of returning for use again. 

In her comments Tuesday to journalist who cover the Department of Defense, Hicks said the objective in selecting drone companies for the first phase of Replicator development was “to get to scale fast.” The time frame she gave for having those initial capabilities in place was 18 to 24 months. 

But Hicks also noted those details are likely to be the last the outside world will hear about Replicator activities or drones chosen for them for quite some time.

“We’re being very careful, as you know, about the way in which we talk about Replicator,” Hicks said, according to quotes published by DefenseScoop. “Our goal here is an operational goal, which is in addition to the acquisition cycle, and that operational goal is to create dilemmas for China and any other competitor who might look at this approach and try to undermine it… (H)ow we choose to speak about it, in terms of the particular programs or projects that we’ll be accelerating through Replicator is to be determined.”

Hicks did stipulate that spending on Replicator drone development and production is expected to require redeployment of about 0.5% the Department of Defense’s funding, which in terms of the 2024 $842 billion budget comes to a bit over $4 billion.