Today, witnesses at a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing agreed that the Department of Defense’s (DoD) newly announced ‘Replicator’ initiative is a step in the right direction, but raised a similar concern: can the DoD execute this ambitious plan in its two-year timeframe?
In late August 2023, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks unveiled the Replicator initiative to create thousands of inexpensive autonomous systems, which she claimed will be a game-changer as the United States continues to combat China’s growing influence across the world and military mass.
“This effort is not only valuable, it’s necessary if the U.S. military is to reverse its decades-long death spiral of rising costs and shrinking quantities for major weapons platforms,” Paul Scharre, executive vice president and director of studies at the Center for New American Security, said during the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation hearing.
However, the program has a bold agenda: to field thousands of attritable, autonomous systems in 18 to 24 months. The timeline for meeting this goal will test DoD’s ability to generate the types of systems it needs, in the quantity it needs them, and at the speed required to deter China.
Nearly two months later, about 10 percent of the way through the timeframe, specific details of Replicator remain publicly elusive, and indications are that it is still in its formative phase. In addition, there is little insight into what is necessary to make it successful, whether it is feasible, and what counter-effects it seeks to offer to counter Chinese military capabilities.
Scharre believes that the Pentagon’s bureaucracy will likely face challenges in executing this effort.
“Low-cost attritable platforms and autonomous systems are both paradigm-busting concepts inside the [DoD]. These concepts have supporters, including the department’s current leadership, but they challenge the Pentagon’s traditional ways of doing business,” Scharre said.
“Keeping an acquisition system low-cost will be especially challenging since the default instinct of the DoD’s acquisition system is to add requirements and increase survivability, which will raise costs and threaten the success of such an effort,” he said.
Yet, he sees a glimmer of hope as the DoD has had recent successes in breaking the mold and moving quickly. For example, the Defense Innovation Unit has brought in commercial technologies in a matter of weeks and months, rather than years and decades.
Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, believes that there is little evidence the DoD and its industry partners can field thousands of operationally relevant uncrewed systems in the next two years.
“The Pentagon’s anemic procurement of uncrewed systems has generally discouraged industry from ramping up its production capacity. And in those cases where privately funded companies or traditional defense contractors have invested in manufacturing infrastructure, they have lost money or exited the sector entirely,” Clark said.
Clark too sees a small glimmer of hope in DoD accomplishing this goal.
In Hick’s initial comments, she stated that the initiative will exploit the creativity of U.S. warfighters in addressing problems faced by operational commanders. According to Clark, this approach offers a better path to gaining an advantage and mitigating the challenges the U.S. industry will likely face in rapidly producing thousands of militarily relevant uncrewed systems.
“But unlocking Replicator’s ability to deliver innovative solutions for pressing operational problems will require the DoD to integrate uncrewed systems into the mainline force rather than continuing to treat them only as surveillance systems or extensions of crewed ships and aircraft,” he added.
Bill Greenwalt, nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, also noted that while this is an essential program, the department’s culture and business practices stack the odds against the Replicator effort succeeding.
“A Replicator-type program has the potential to be a significant game-changer and may well be worth pursuing, but only if it is done correctly and it does not crowd out funding for near-term munitions and other critical requirements,” Greenbelt said.
“Each of the Replicator goals faces significant challenges, and the issue for Congress to consider is whether any of this is realistically achievable in the short term. It could be, but the odds may well be stacked against this initiative becoming anything more than a buzzword or a new lightning bolt on a Joint Staff PowerPoint briefing chart,” he added.
According to Greenbelt, because the Replicator remains in its “infancy” stage, this is a good time for Congress to begin asking questions to ensure that, as DoD embarks on this effort, it’s on the correct path and it can achieve its objectives.
