Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks emphasized that in a potential conflict with the United States, China’s greatest advantage lies in its “mass” – more ships, more missiles, and more people. To counter this advantage, the Defense Department is launching an initiative called “Replicator,” aiming to produce a substantial number of low-cost drones for deployment across air, sea, and land within the next two years.
These affordable drones, similar to those effectively employed by Ukraine against Russia, can be manufactured close to the battlefield at a significantly lower cost compared to conventional Defense Department weaponry. Hicks articulated, “They can be used consistent with our principles of mission command, where we empower the lowest-possible echelons to innovate and succeed in battle. And they can serve as resilient, distributed systems, even if bandwidth is limited, intermittent, degraded, or denied.” She made these remarks during the NDIA conference in Washington, D.C.
Furthermore, these drones address a major challenge the U.S. military would confront in the Pacific in a confrontation with China: the sheer number of targets spread across a vast geographic expanse. Adm. John Aquilino, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, quantified this challenge, stating, “Here’s a metric for me: 1,000 targets for 24 hours.”
INDOPACOM has collaborated with DARPA on streamlining the collection and integration of targeting data throughout the theater at a pace faster than traditional methods, employing a program known as “Assault Breaker II.”
While various Pentagon services and research arms have explored swarming technologies for years, this new effort concentrates on scaling up the development and deployment of such technologies, relying extensively on commercial technology. The Defense Innovation Unit will play a pivotal role in this initiative, as per Hicks’ statement.
She added, “The secretary [of defense] has asked me to personally oversee it, together with the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And we’ll be supported by the director of DIU, who will help us bring the full power of DOD’s innovation ecosystem to bear.”
Ukrainian forces have already utilized large swarms of interconnected unmanned munitions equipped with rudimentary artificial intelligence for target recognition via satellite, highlighting the potential of such drones. However, this success underscores the challenge for the DOD in deploying large quantities of cost-effective drones to counter China while avoiding Chinese components, as noted by CNA analyst Sam Bendett.
He pointed out, “These drones are essentially expendable technologies that can cause a completely disproportionate amount of damage relative to its overall costs. They are used in large numbers in Ukraine since not every FPV mission is effective, but at this point, both sides have thousands of trained FPV pilots who can operate them around the clock.”
Regarding the optimistic goal of producing thousands of such drones, Bendett expressed reservations, stating, “having many thousands may ultimately not be enough when the monthly count on both sides in Ukraine is in the tens of thousands of these cheap quadcopters.”
Hicks concluded with determination, “We’ll also aim to replicate and inculcate how we will achieve that goal so we can scale whatever’s relevant in the future again and again and again. Easier said than done? You bet. But we’re going to do it.”
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SOURCE
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/08/hellscape-dod-launches-massive-drone-swarm-program-counter-china/389797/