Pentagon Selects Second Tranche of Replicator Drone Program

The Defense Department announced the selection of its second tranche of all-domain attributable autonomous systems this week as part of its Replicator program.

The second tranche, dubbed Replicator 1.2, “includes systems in the air and maritime domains, as well as integrated software enablers that will enhance the autonomy and resilience of other Replicator systems.”

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said in a statement that Replicator is “demonstrably reducing barriers to innovation, and delivering capabilities to warfighters at a rapid pace,” and emphasized the “broad range of traditional and nontraditional defense and technology companies,” that are contributing to the effort ahead of its August 2025 deployment timeline.

The first tranche of systems were unveiled in May.

Aditi Kumar, deputy director for Strategy, Policy, and National Security Partnerships at the Defense Innovation Unit, said at Defense One’s State of Defense Business event that Replicator is designed to better connect systems worldwide while reducing the manpower needed to oversee them.

“The end goal here is that we want to be able to field this map of systems, be able to communicate with them in all sorts of different environments, be able to reduce the number of operators that are required to field them, which inherently means increase the amount that they can do autonomously and increase the level of collaboration between these systems, so that, for example, you could have the aerial system identify a target and communicate that to a maritime system that is better placed to prosecute that target,” Kumar said.

Kumar said that lessons learned from conflict in Ukraine are being applied to acquisition within the Replicator program, and specifically within the DIU and its operations.

“We are talking to them constantly about the technologies that we are building, and they are giving us real time feedback from the battlefield, which is informing those capabilities,” Kumar said.

According to Kumar, defense officials have found that the potential of commercial technology to be a force multiplier on the battlefield, and the importance of integrating and then quickly replacing commercial technology in the field offers a competitive edge.

“What we’re seeing in Ukraine is that commercial technology is cutting edge. It is best of breed,” Kumar told the audience. “It has lots of advantages, including the fact that it’s more easily interoperable, and so we’re seeing more interoperable systems that are using these commercial technologies, and that’s something that we have obviously taken to heart in Replicator.”

Moving forward toward the August 2025 deadline for full deployment of the program, Kumar said that additional challenges have moved away from the early policy challenges of the program into more process-oriented roadblocks.

She said the DIU has created a “very strong feedback loop” between vendors, technologists, users and others in the community to establish communication on a scale never seen before, and she hopes DIU will continue to bridge the gap between these parties in pursuit of programs like Replicator.

“We don’t need the Defense Innovation Unit to be the size of a military enterprise. That is actually not our goal,” Kumar said. “Our role is to identify best to create technology, and our goal is to create that bridge to scaling, or a very quick path to realizing the technology doesn’t meet our needs, so we don’t make firms individual.”