The announcement was heavy on goals: to field thousands of drones across multiple domains in the next two years to outcompete China’s industrial advantages. But left unanswered was how the program would be funded, what role industry would play and why the program was coming now.

At the Defense News Conference on Wednesday, Hicks answered many of those questions.

First, Replicator will not need new money. Instead, she said the program will pool already funded programs from the military services. Defense Innovation Unit Director Doug Beck, she said, is already canvassing the services for programs to bring forward.

“We’re not creating new bureaucracy, and we will not be asking for new money in [fiscal 20]24,” Hicks said. “Not all problems need new money.”

She acknowledged this approach might generate skepticism. How can a Department of Defense initiative promise lasting innovation without establishing a program of record?

Hicks argued the attention of leadership will compensate. Replicator, she said, falls under the charge of the Deputy’s Innovation Steering Group, or DISG, chaired by Hicks and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Their ability to trim red tape, she said, will accelerate the effort.

Second, Replicator is focused on competing with China. But its arrival doesn’t mean the Pentagon has new intelligence on China’s intentions.

“We’ve said before that conflict with the PRC is neither imminent nor inevitable,” Hicks said. “That remains our assessment.”

Replicator, according to Hicks, has two overarching goals. One is to strengthen the deterrence already preventing conflict on the Taiwan Strait. The other is, in the event of conflict, to make sure the U.S. has an edge.

“We never want to find ourselves in a situation where, in the words of [former Defense] Secretary Bob Gates, ‘The troops are at war, but the Pentagon is not,’” she said.

Still, what Replicator will look like in action remains vague. The most concrete example Hicks pointed to is from the private sector: groups of small, low-flying satellites — such as Starlink’s, which Ukraine relies on for intelligence and internet connection.

Whether the Pentagon’s vast bureaucracy can move so nimbly remains to be seen. Hicks said “there are concerns” about whether industry can meet the ambitious two-year timeline, especially without a new program of record.

“We are worried about proving out with all parties that the department can actually lead itself [and] does not get mired in red tape,” said Hicks.

The key is to develop, mass-produce, and transfer Shahed-like drones to Ukrainian forces, enabling them to overwhelm and strike Russian targets in occupied Ukraine at the scale and frequency required to help defeat the invasion.

The Shahed-136 is an Iranian-developed suicide drone that Tehran transferred to Russia, along with its smaller cousin, the Shahed-131. It is a propeller-driven, carbon-fiber airframe that typically relies on satellite guidance, can carry a warhead of up to 40 kilograms, and has a range of around 1,000 kilometers. Most of its components are Western-made, commercially available and not particularly complex, keeping production costs low, reportedly $20,000 to $30,000 per drone.

Perhaps due to this simplicity, Western militaries have mostly overlooked such systems — but that is a mistake.

Essentially a propeller-driven cruise missile, the Shahed-136 serves a similar role as Tomahawk cruise missiles, primarily striking operational or strategic targets from standoff distance. While Tomahawks have superior range, speed, and warhead size, they cost up to $2 million each, roughly 100 times more than a Shahed. Using massed attacks of low cost Shaheds in conjunction with cruise missiles, Russia has overwhelmed Ukrainian air defenses and forced Ukraine to expend scarce interceptor missiles.

Russia has used Shaheds to strike bridges, fuel-storage facilities, and even frontline targets, but they have likely done the most damage by striking electrical sub-stations. While Ukraine is reportedly downing between half to three-fourths of incoming Shaheds, many still get through. Reportedly, Moscow is seeking to secure hundreds or even thousands more.

While the United States is bolstering Ukraine’s air defenses, defense alone is insufficient. Kyiv needs a Shahed-like capability to strike Russian military targets well behind the frontlines, especially bases in Crimea, which are mostly outside the range of the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb.

With such drones, Ukraine could attack targets such as ports, airbases, and supply nodes beyond the range of its currently fielded weapons. Examples include Sevastopol Naval Base, the port of Berdyansk, Russia’s logistics hubs in Luhansk and Dzhankoi, and the Saki, Belbek, and Gvardeyskoye airbases in Crimea. Hitting these targets would diminish Russian combat power, disrupt command and control, impede logistics, and force the redeployment of finite air defense assets. Put simply, it’ll help Ukraine win the war faster.

Indeed, Ukraine has already conducted sporadic drone strikes on Russian military targets in occupied Crimea and elsewhere using what appear to be long-range suicide drones. The Ukrainian military has attacked Sevastopol naval base and Belbek airbase in Crimea several times, and strikes on the Engels-2 and Dyagilevo airbases damaged multiple aircraft. While Kyiv lacks enough drones for a major air campaign, these operations provide proof of concept and should be scaled up dramatically.

Unfortunately, the U.S. military does not appear to field systems, at least in large quantities, directly analogous to the Shahed-136. Washington has provided Kyiv with the Switchblade-300 loitering munition and plans to send the larger Switchblade-600, but these systems have much smaller warheads and shorter ranges. The Gray Eagle, a system U.S. senators are pushing the Biden administration to provide, is roughly similar to the Turkish TB-2, which Russian air defenses have rendered largely ineffective as a strike platform since early in the war. Details of the Phoenix Ghost program are scarce, but if it were providing Ukraine the ability to conduct an extensive air campaign behind Russian lines, that fact would be readily visible in open sources.

Kyiv is working on building its own answer to the Shahed-136, but Ukraine’s defense industry has limited capacity, thanks in part to Russian attacks on factories. In fact, the CEO of a Ukrainian drone company said in October that only 20 percent of the military’s demand for drones had been met. Kyiv continues to lose drones in battle, so the shortage almost certainly persists.

However, the United States has the necessary industrial capacity to fill this gap. If industry avoids the dual pitfalls of overengineering and low production rates that have bedeviled many recent procurement programs, Ukraine could receive large quantities of drones in short order.

Iran builds Shaheds from commercially available components to simplify design, accelerate production, and reduce costs — and U.S. industry should do the same. While sophisticated seekers, guidance systems, and engines would improve the functionality of the drones, what Ukraine needs is a “good enough” solution delivered quickly at scale, not an exquisite solution delivered after the war ends.

Iranian factories have a production rate of 150 Shahed-136s per month, according to a Ukrainian military-affiliated source. But Ukraine needs thousands of similar weapons. If Washington moves quickly and keeps the design simple, it should be able to meet this need, enabling Ukraine to use masses of drones in each attack, compared to Russia’s current rate of only two or three dozen per salvo.

As the United States rediscovers its role as the arsenal of democracy, the Biden administration should provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs now, not look for optimal solutions that will take years to develop. Necessity is the mother of invention, and what Kyiv needs now is a way to strike Russian forces throughout occupied Ukraine with large quantities of relatively inexpensive munitions. That’s exactly what a mass-produced U.S. version of the Shahed-136 would provide.

Ryan Brobst is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, refused to provide details on exactly where the balloon was or whether there was any new consideration of shooting it down. The military had ruled that option out, officials had said, due to potential risks to people on the ground.

Ryder said it was at an altitude of about 60,000 feet, was maneuverable and had changed course. He said it currently was posing no threat. He said there was only one balloon being tracked.

Earlier, the U.S. announced that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had postponed a planned high-stakes weekend diplomatic trip to China as the Biden administration weighed a broader response to the discovery of a high-altitude Chinese balloon flying over sensitive sites in the western United States.

That abrupt decision came despite China’s claim that the balloon was a weather research “airship” that had blown off course. The U.S. has described it as a surveillance vehicle.

The development came just before Blinken had been due to depart Washington for Beijing and marked a new blow to already strained U.S.-Chinese relations.

President Joe Biden declined to comment when questioned at an economic event. Two 2024 reelection challengers, former President Donald Trump, and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, said the U.S. should immediately shoot down the balloon.

Discovery of the balloon was announced by Pentagon officials who said one of the places it was spotted was over the state of Montana, which is home to one of America’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base.

A senior defense official said the U.S. prepared fighter jets, including F-22s, to shoot down the balloon if ordered. The Pentagon ultimately recommended against it, noting that even as the balloon was over a sparsely populated area of Montana, its size would create a debris field large enough that it could have put people at risk.

The official said the balloon was headed over the Montana missile fields, but the U.S. has assessed that it had only “limited” value in terms of providing intelligence China couldn’t obtain by other technologies, such as spy satellites.

The discovery alarmed many in Washington across the country and, besides the U.S. protests lodged with Chinese officials, it attracted strong criticism of the administration from Republican members of Congress who have advocated taking a tougher stance with China.

China, which angrily denounces surveillance attempts by the U.S. and others over areas it considers to be its territory and once forced down an American spy plane, offered a generally muted reaction to the Pentagon announcement.

In a relatively conciliatory statement, the Chinese foreign ministry said late Friday that the balloon was a civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research. The ministry said the airship has limited “self-steering” capabilities and “deviated far from its planned course” because of winds.

“The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure,” the statement said, citing a legal term used to refer to events beyond one’s control.

Blinken had been prepared as late as Thursday to travel to Beijing this weekend but the administration had begun to reconsider the trip following the discovery of the balloon on Wednesday, even before its presence was made public, an official said.

The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the administration had ” noted” China’s expression of regret.

Blinken’s long-anticipated meetings with senior Chinese officials had been seen in both countries as a way to find some areas of common ground at a time of major disagreements over Taiwan, human rights, China’s claims in the South China Sea, North Korea, Russia’s war in Ukraine, trade policy and climate change.

Although the trip, which was agreed to in November by President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit in Indonesia, had not been formally announced, officials in both Beijing and Washington had been talking in recent days about Blinken’s imminent arrival.

The meetings were to begin on Sunday and go through Monday

Seventeen House Democrats and Republicans on Thursday sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, pressing him to expedite an ongoing risk assessment to determine whether transferring the technology poses a risk should it fall into Russian hands.

“There continue to be delays in delivering Gray Eagle systems to Ukraine despite urgent requests from Ukraine’s Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov and ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova,” the lawmakers wrote. “While important, thorough risk assessments and mitigation should not come at the expense of Ukrainian lives.”

Pentagon officials have been mulling a request for Gray Eagle drones from Ukraine since at least April, but it’s hung up over concerns about securing the technology as well as its survivability in the contested airspace above Ukraine. Officials said they are also considering the potential impact on the U.S. military’s readiness if the drone is provided from its own stockpiles.

On Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters that the U.S. has sent Ukraine other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems including Puma and ScanEagle drones, as well as Switchblade loitering munitions.

“We continue to maintain a robust dialogue with Ukraine and the international community about what we and the international community can do to support Ukraine,” Ryder said.

The letter presses the Pentagon on the Gray Eagle and the MQ-9A Reaper, which are both made by General Atomics of San Diego, California. The U.S. has sold Reapers to the U.K., France and others, but has not exported the Gray Eagle, which can be armed with up to four Hellfire missiles.

The lawmakers, led by Reps. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Mike Quigley, D-Ill., and Andy Harris, R-Md., called for completing the review “in a timely manner.”

“Should the decision be made to transfer Gray Eagles, then it should be done expeditiously,” they wrote. “Or, if the determination is to withhold this technology, that needs to be communicated quickly and clearly to afford our Ukrainian partners the opportunity to make alternative plans.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., also signed onto the letter.

Contacted about the letter Thursday, General Atomics spokesman C. Mark Brinkley criticized the U.S. government’s “endless wait-and-see response” amid months of discussions with Washington and Kyiv over the merits of the move.

The company has offered to train Ukrainian operators at no expense to American taxpayers and, Brinkley said, responded to “repeated concerns about technology transfer and provided options for increased battlefield survivability.”

“If you think HIMARS [the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System] changed things, put some Gray Eagles in the air and see what happens next,” Brinkley said. “No one wants to see the significant gains made by the Ukrainians erode due to inaction.”

WASHINGTON – Teledyne FLIR Defense expanded its contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to provide nearly 500 unmanned robots to help with disarming landmines and unexploded ordnance.

The robots, called Centaurs, are used by the military to put service members at less risk when evaluating and defusing explosive weapons. As an uncrewed ground system, Centaur is equipped with a single mechanical arm, sensors and cameras that can detect and transmit information, creating distance between the hazardous material and personnel.

“We put distance between good people and bad things,” Tom Frost, the Chelmsford, Massachusetts-based company’s general manager of unmanned ground systems, told C4ISRNET.

In situations where there is potential contamination in a building, the military can send in a robot first and it will report back on the status of the situation from up to a kilometer away, he said.

Centaurs have been deployed in both domestic and conflict situations to investigate hazards, Frost said, adding that they could be used to address unexploded ordinance that needs to be dismantled in Ukraine.

“As the Russians are retreating from some of the areas where Ukraine is making advances, the reports say that they’re booby-trapping,” he said. “Our robots are exactly the right tool to go in and handle those situations safely.”

The Centaur is designed to be modular. Rather than being sold in one configuration, the robot can be reconfigured with different sensors and apparatus so that it can perform a myriad of missions.

Formerly known as Endeavor Robotics, the company previously worked with the Pentagon to provide the military with robots to assist with the detection of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Teledyne partnered with the Army in 2017 to provide Centaurs. In the years following, the Navy, Air Force and Marines opted to deploy the Centaur system. Orders have totaled more than 1,800 since 2020.

The company also supplies the Army with its Kobra robot, a heavy version of the Centaur. It’s also used for explosive ordnance disposal and other heavy-duty jobs and can carry more payload. Unlike the Centaur, which only weighs 160 pounds, the Kobra weighs more than 500 pounds, making it less portable.

On Thursday, the company announced that it received new orders for the Centaur system worth $62.1 million. Deliveries of the robots are expected to begin in the first quarter.

Looking ahead, Frost said the company is working with the government to explore the option of bolting on an additional arm so the two appendages could use tools in tandem and complete more complicated manipulations.

The announcement on Tuesday comes after months of studying options between the costly Taktisches Luftverteidigungssystem, or TLVS, aimed at destroying sophisticated missiles and aircraft, and cheaper weapons for intercepting enemy drones.

Ministry officials told lawmakers they plan to begin modernizing the Patriot missile defense inventory starting in 2023 to keep the system usable through 2030. The decision amounts to a win for manufacturer Raytheon Technologies, which had feared losing the preeminence of its global cash cow over a novel system developed by a major European country.

In a second step, officials in Berlin want to field a new defensive system against short-range threats, eventually replacing the “old and qualitatively and quantitatively insufficient” Ozelot fleet, according to a ministry statement. That project has the potential to spark Europe-wide cooperation, officials said, pointing to the Dutch-German Apollo program, under which both nations have integrated a portion of their air-defense formations.

Joint acquisitions with other European Union and NATO partners toward a “European drone and air-defense” system could be in the offing, the statement added.

The steps outlined on Tuesday amount to a mere proposal for German lawmakers, as there is no money programmed in Germany’s midterm budget for major air defense investments.

The odds are diminishing for a more sophisticated German defense system against hypersonic missiles, such as those developed by Russia, anytime soon. That is because annual defense budget requirements are set to exceed government spending plans with quickening speed in the coming years.

Still, the German government has yet to formally declare TLVS canceled, even though vendor MBDA Deutschland — the local partner of main contractor Lockheed Martin — has begun planning its business posture without it.

“At the moment, there is no decision yet about where things are going,” a German Defence Ministry spokeswoman told Defense News. “We’ll first have to wait for clarity on the budget.”

Notably, the proposed Patriot upgrades will not introduce significant new capabilities, including 360-degree coverage in threat interception, according to the spokeswoman. That feature was a major driver in the push for TLVS because it meant deployments would have a much lower footprint and manning requirement than Patriot batteries, which can only fire interceptors in one direction.

The 360-degree requirement remains on the books, the spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin officials “intend to discuss with the customer in the next weeks how TLVS capabilities can contribute to the Bundeswehr’s future design of ground-based air defense,” a company spokesman wrote in an emailed statement.

The company’s doggedness may stem from a short mention of “a TLVS” in the Finance Ministry’s latest budget proposal, dated March 22. That document lists the system as part of a collection of programs involving international obligations about which there is governmentwide agreement for funding, at least in principle.

The bulk of the requested funding will go toward future surface combatant studies that are funded this year to the tune of $33 million.

“This effort will lay the analytic foundation for the development of the Future Surface Combatant Force,” the documents read. “Ships produced from this effort will fill critical gaps in the fleet in the 2045 timeframe created by the decommissioning of CG 47, DDG 51, and LCS 1 [and] 2 ships.”

The effort seems aimed at integrating as much unmanned technology as possible into a future fleet.

“Unmanned surface vessels concepts and CONOPS will be developed to decouple mission capability from manned force structure,” the budget book read, using an acronym for “concept of operations.”

The Navy has in recent months become more vocal about the need to move to unmanned surface technology as a means of increasing the reach of Navy sensors and weapons without spending billions of dollars on large surface combatants. Indeed, the Navy has sought to scale back investment in large surface combatants, appearing to cancel five of the 13 Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in the budget.

The studies are aimed at “concept development engineering, mission effectiveness analysis, force architecture analysis, and other analyses for formulation of future surface ship force structure along with development of the platforms, payloads, people and processes required to accomplish these efforts,” Navy budget documents read.

“Advanced ship concept studies, ship and ship systems technology assessments, and the development and upgrade of ship concept design and engineering tools, methods, and criteria are funded in this project,” it continued.

Early days

The work in 2020 includes completion of initial requirements for unmanned surface vehicles and the development of a technology investment strategy to invest in tech the Navy thinks it will need to enable the fleet of tomorrow but that doesn’t yet exist.

The work is still early on, but the Navy thinks it will be integral to the success of the future fleet. That’s vital since the Navy is coming off a very unsuccessful transformation that saw the next-generation destroyer truncated to three ships, the next-generation cruiser canceled and the littoral combat ship truncated, with the first four ships already up for decommissioning with as little as six years of service life on them.

“This project provides the foundation for an affordable and mission capable surface ship force,” the documents read. “It also supports the next step in the development of a transformed naval force by accomplishing the [early development] efforts for all potential surface combatants.

“These efforts are the required first step in the identification of relevant, effective, and affordable platform requirements for the future force.”

The surface Navy was recently directed by the head of Fleet Forces Command to study and develop initial concepts of operations for unmanned surface vessels, which will be hammered out and tested at the newly established Surface Development Squadron.

SURFDEVRON will be home to new technologies such as the Sea Hunter drone and the DDG-1000 class.

LONDON — The British Defence Ministry’s top civilian has identified in a letter to lawmakers the reasons why a drone acquisition program has experienced a near 40 percent hike in costs.

The Ministry of Defence decided to delay by two years the delivery of 16 General Atomic Protector RG Mk1 drones to replace the Royal Air Force’s MQ-9 Reaper fleet, the letter to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee said.

Stephen Lovegrove, the ministry’s permanent secretary, cited that decision as the main reason for the £325 million (U.S. $427 million) cost increase to the program, as £187 million of that could be attributed to the delay.

“The cost growth and time delay to the program imposed in July 2017 were outside of program tolerances but were the result of the need to ensure the affordability of the overall defence program,” Lovegrove wrote in his letter.

The MoD is currently in negotiations with the U.S. over a deal to build the first three of the 16 Protectors scheduled to be purchased for the RAF.

The final number of vehicles on order could eventually expand beyond 16 — subject to the MoD’s fragile finances in the coming years unless defense gets a sizable increase in the Conservative government’s next budget round due later this year.

The letter was sent Nov. 5 but has only recently been made public.

Lovegrove detailed further causes of the cost increase rise in the drone program, which was expected to cost £816 million when it was approved by the MoD in 2016.

Aside from the increased costs caused by the delay, the letter said that the fall in the value of the pound against the dollar accounted for £50.8 million of the price rise, and a new primary sensor cost another £64 million. Other unspecified program costs accounted for a further £23 million.

The pound has firmed up against the dollar a little since the Conservative Party won the general election in December, which may lessen the impact of increased costs for the moment.

The new primary sensor investment involves provision of an improved electro-optical and infrared sensor. The letter said the investment was to avoid future obsolescence issues.

Consideration is still being given to the purchase of what is known as a “due regard air-to-air radar” designed for vital detect-and-avoid duties on the platform.

Protector, which is the British name for its version of the new General Atomics MQ-9B SkyGuardian, is scheduled to achieve initial operating capability in November 2023, the letter read.

The vehicle will replace the current fleet of MQ-9 Reapers, which the RAF has operated almost constantly during the last few years over Afghanistan and the greater Middle East.

Lovegrove said the MoD had compared Protector with other options to meet the requirement but the General Atomics platform remained the best value for money.

“A comparison was made between: developing a new remotely piloted aircraft system capability (either collaboratively or nationally); procuring the current Reaper Blk 5 (as used by the US Air Force and others); and procuring Protector,” he said.

“This concluded that procuring Protector represented best value for money, as its higher performance meant that the operational task could be delivered by procuring fewer air vehicles. The 2-year delay and resultant cost increase have not undermined this value for money case … it remains affordable despite the cost growth,” the permanent secretary added.

Lovegrove said the biggest problem for the Protector program was not the platform itself but the availability of trained crew in the run-up to initial operating capability.

“The most significant risk to the Protector program is the RAF’s ability to generate and sustain the volume of trained personnel necessary to assure IOC in Nov 2023. The Protector work force builds on the current Reaper force; training and retaining sufficient remotely piloted aircraft system crews has historically proved challenging and is being closely monitored,” the letter said.

The Protector is expected to fly longer and hit harder than the Reaper. The UAV will also fly in nonsegregated airspace in places like the U.K .

in September, the MoD and General Atomics signed a significant deal to complete the test and evaluation activities required to fly the system in civil airspace. The first test and evaluation aircraft is due to be delivered next year subject to the successful completion of the production contract.

An initial production deal is currently in negotiation, with aiming of inking a deal in the next few months.

In a first for the system, the SkyGuardian version of the medium-altitude, long-endurance drone flew across the Atlantic Ocean in July from Grand Forks, North Dakota, to RAF Fairford in England. The flight covered 3,760 nautical miles in 24 hours and 2 minutes.

The initial investment in the Triton capability is AU$1.4 billion (U.S. $1.03 billion), which includes AU$200 million to enter into a cooperative development program with the U.S. Navy; and AU$364 million for major infrastructure works at two Royal Australian Air Force bases.

The total cost of the deal, including whole of life sustainment costs, is estimated to be AU$6.9 billion Australian dollars (U.S. $5.1 billion).

The first aircraft will be delivered in 2023 and the last in 2025. They will be based at RAAF Base Edinburgh in South Australia and at Tindal in the Northern Territory, but are also likely to be forward-deployed to other airfields around the continent, including a string of bare bases to the north and north-west.

The announcement marks the Gate 2 milestone in the Australian Defence’s Force’s Air 7000 Phase 1B program, which seeks to acquire a high altitude, long endurance maritime surveillance platform to complement its eventual fleet of 12 Boeing P-8A Poseidon manned maritime patrol aircraft.

Australia’s Triton program earlier achieved Gate 1 approval in 2014, and the 2016 Defence White Paper affirmed the government’s commitment to the acquisition of the capability, subject to the successful completion of the U.S. Navy’s Triton development program. At that time the requirement was for seven Tritons , one less than the six announced yesterday, and was initially capped at AU$4 billion, although this did not include through-life sustainment costs.

“The Triton will complement the surveillance role of the P-8A Poseidon aircraft through sustained operations at long ranges as well as being able to undertake a range of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) tasks,” according to a joint statement by Prime Minister Turnbull, Minister for Defence Marise Payne and Minister for Defence Industry Christopher Pyne. “Together these aircraft will significantly enhance our anti-submarine warfare and maritime strike capability, as well as our search and rescue capability.”

Minister Pyne said that the Triton will be responsible for surveillance of Australia’s areas of maritime responsibility, which represents over 10 percent of the world’s surface. “They will provide surveillance and reconnaissance across the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Southern Ocean as far as Antarctica,” he said.

“Triton provides unprecedented endurance and 360-degree coverage through its unique sensor suite,” commented Doug Shaffer, Northrop Grumman’s vice president of Triton programs. “Australia has one of the largest sea zones in the world over which it has rights to use marine resources, also known as an Economic Exclusion Zone. As a flexible platform, Triton can serve in missions as varied as maritime domain awareness, target acquisition, fisheries protection, oil field monitoring and humanitarian relief.”

The Australian Defence Force estimates Triton is capable of establishing a ten-hour orbit in the Southern Ocean, south of Heard Island, or similar efforts to the north of Guam and to the East of Fiji in the Pacific Ocean, from bases around the country.

Australia is interested in the multi-intelligence (MULTI-INT), also known as integration functional capability 4 version of the Triton. This features several enhancements over the baseline aircraft and includes a signals intelligence payload which, in U.S. Navy service, is intended to replace the Lockheed EP-3E Aries surveillance platform.

The cooperative development program Australia has signed with the U.S. Navy is similar to the agreement it has with the Navy regarding P-8A spiral development and will seek to influence the further development of the MULTI-INT Triton to meet Australia’s specific needs. Items of interest are understood to include the integration of a weather radar system, for prolonged operations in tropical conditions where daily thunderstorms are a fact of life, and a ground moving target indicator to facilitate overland ISR missions in addition to the blue water maritime surveillance role.

“This cooperative program will strengthen our ability to develop advanced capability and conduct joint military operations,” Prime Minister Turnbull said.

Army researchers say they can do just that: 3D print a quadcopter airframe. Better yet, they are developing a system to allow soldiers to customize their drones to meet specific mission needs.

“A soldier can input certain specifications – things like range and endurance and necessary payload carrying – and the software tool will tailor a vehicle based on those mission needs, based on what parts are available,” said John Gerbes, a mechanical engineer at Army Research Lab (ARL).

ARL has been coordinating with the Marine Corps as the likely end-user of such a system. Early research led to a 2016 demonstration at U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s annual Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment, or AEWE, at Fort Benning, Georgia, and a second demonstration in fall 2017 at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

That 2016 trial sent engineers back to the lab to fine-tune their offerings. While their system could deliver a 3D-printed drone, developers discovered potential end users wanted some specific features.

“One surprise was in the sophistication of information they desired. They wanted a much deeper breakdown of system tradeoffs: ‘If I do this, performance does that,’” Gerbes said. “So we created a dashboard where they can actually drag stuff around, where they can adjust range and endurance and payload in one vehicle versus another.”

The Army is not alone in offering up a vision for a 3D-printed drone. Hobbyists can download instructions for build-it-yourself copters and can even buy ready-made printable drone kits on Amazon. YouTube offers video tutorials.

The military-grade project looks to go beyond these commercials offerings, by making available the widest possible range of vehicles. “Our emphasis is on inherent flexibility,” Gerbes said. “It’s not just about providing a 3D-printed UAV but about providing a suite of tool to meet mission-specific needs.”

Toolkit for flight

Army planners say they envision a portable set of interchangeable components that could be used to build a wide assortment of drones. Ideally, a 3-D printer would churn out the frame, while a selection of motors, sensors, cameras and other apparatus could be selected from a standing inventory.

“It’s an integrated system model that allows you to match the mission to the components,” said Eric Spero, a team lead within ARL’s vehicle technology directorate. “If I know what mission I need to accomplish, I want to be able to select the most appropriate electronics and combine that with a pre-defined structure.”

As envisioned, the system will apply sophisticated software protocols to determine the optimal design for a given mission. Users would input needs such as size, weight and endurance, “and the software can filter the catalog around those criteria to get the best matched solutions,” Spero said.

The use of 3D printing, or additive technology, makes it possible to create these ad hoc solutions to meet a broad range of requirements. Rather than carry parts and pieces for every possible configuration, soldiers will be able to manufacture on the fly those components that best suit the need.

“If you can scale the arms longer or shorter, that links to the motor, which links to the battery, which links to the control systems. When you can do that, that is when you really leveraging the power of additive technology,” Spero said.

This vision of a custom-tailored ISR asset isn’t a stand-alone idea, but rather part of Army’s broader effort to leverage 3D printing as a means to create a range of mission-specific tools.

“This is one step toward giving soldiers the right tools they need when they need them,” said Larry “L.J.” Holmes, Lead, Additive Manufacturing-Hybrid Operations Team (AM-HOT) at RDECOM, the Research, Development and Engineering Command.

He described UAVs as the “low-hanging fruit,” a point of interest across Army and Marine Corps user groups. But he suggested that this capability might be just a starting point as the Army seeks other areas in which 3D printing could fulfill mission-specific needs on the fly.

There’s no set timeline for the 3D printed drones to go operational, as ARL continues to fine-tune the technology and explore the needs of potential user groups.