{"id":69006,"date":"2025-01-14T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2025\/01\/14\/the-pentagons-replicator-drone-bonanza-faces-an-uncertain-future\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:07:10","slug":"the-pentagons-replicator-drone-bonanza-faces-an-uncertain-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/pentagon\/2025\/01\/14\/the-pentagons-replicator-drone-bonanza-faces-an-uncertain-future\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pentagon\u2019s \u2018Replicator\u2019 drone bonanza faces an uncertain future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a speech last August, Kathleen Hicks listed the two most common questions about Replicator, her two-year pledge to buy thousands of drones and help the U.S. military compete with China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we launched Replicator, a common refrain I heard was: \u2018Can it work?\u2019 These days I\u2019m more likely to hear: \u2018Will it stick?\u2019\u201d said Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That second question soon won\u2019t be hers to answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since she first unveiled Replicator a year and a half ago, it\u2019s nearly become a trademark. Hicks has sat in all of the Pentagon\u2019s major meetings on it. She\u2019s read every story published about the program, prepared in files from her staff. And she\u2019s called its success a referendum on her leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senior Pentagon officials interviewed for this story said the program is on schedule largely through her effort. Now, as Hicks leaves office, the question is whether it can survive without her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republicans and Democrats have applauded the idea behind Replicator. To compete with China, they argue, the Pentagon needs cutting-edge weapons much faster. Hence, aides in Congress and executives at drone firms said they expect it to endure \u2014 albeit with changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And after 16 months, many officials working on the program outside the Pentagon say the biggest change it needs is size. Hicks made the bet to start Replicator, no small feat in a risk-averse bureaucracy, they acknowledged. But without more funding and more weapons on order, it won\u2019t reach its true promise: a military nimble enough for the future of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would like to think that years from now, we would look back and say, \u2018Yes, this began with the Biden administration,\u201d said Chris Brose, an executive at the drone and software firm Anduril. \u201cHowever, the real scale that this got to was delivered by his successors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Magnitude\u2019<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

By early 2023, the problem was clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year before, Russia had started a war with Ukraine dominated by trench warfare, artillery and increasingly drones. Both sides were building them in huge numbers to target, spy and attack at once, known in the military as \u201cswarms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these weren\u2019t American drones. Instead, Ukraine\u2019s soldiers were mostly buying and then tweaking their weapons from DJI, a Chinese company controlling 90% of the consumer market<\/a>. U.S. firms weren\u2019t only behind on building the weapons; their equipment wasn\u2019t even needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know we have a problem on the production side: that DJI has just taken off with the international market. We needed to build out \u2014 we still do need to build out \u2014 that American industry,\u201d Hicks said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deputy is close to the ultimate Pentagon insider. She took her first job in the building at the age of 23. And her habits reflect its culture of productivity. Hicks regularly schedules her day in 15-minute slots, she reads books on better managing her time and she returns hundreds of pages of reading to her staff each week marked with detailed notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So as the problem emerged, Hicks thought about how the Pentagon, internally, could solve it. American companies were indeed making high-tech drones. But the supply was small \u2014 in large part because the Pentagon was a picky customer. The period between signing a contract and actually getting equipment to troops often lasts more than 10 years. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue wasn\u2019t just for Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hicks had entered office saying her top challenge was China, a country so large it could outpace America\u2019s ability to build almost anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was the magnitude of all of the things,\u201d said Mike Horowitz, a former top Pentagon policy official involved in Replicator, who listed out China\u2019s ability to build a range of weapons: ships, submarines, drones, missiles. \u201cThey\u2019re doing all of them simultaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of 2023, Hicks had been visiting Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees U.S. forces across the region, to watch troops experiment and exercise with new technology. She saw the need for more weapons that could punch above their weight. And she decided that if the Pentagon wasn\u2019t buying enough of these already, she would make it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August that year, she took to the stage at a conference in downtown Washington and pledged two things. The Pentagon would field thousands of affordable drones within two years. And it would learn how to buy such weapons faster along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hicks called the two-part program Replicator, named after a tool from Star Trek that can form matter from thin air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018WD-40\u2032<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

At first, other people in the Pentagon and Congress \u2014 largely unaware that the program was coming \u2014 had different names for it. Some called it confusing. Others worried it was a flash in the pan. Overall, the consensus at first was that Replicator was a good idea but that people couldn\u2019t tell whether it was more than that. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had a candid conversation\u201d before the announcement, said a senior defense official involved in the effort with Hicks, granted anonymity to talk freely. \u201cI said we\u2019re probably gonna get our asses kicked for eight to nine months in the press. Are you ready?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the skepticism came from how little Hicks\u2019 team shared about the program after launching it. Because she didn\u2019t want the idea choked by bureaucratic thorns, the deputy announced it without a full plan to discuss it publicly. Even more, her staff wasn\u2019t entirely sure how it would work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy Italian family uses WD-40 for literally everything. \u2014 it\u2019s like you have a cut [use] WD-40. So when we zoomed out, there were all these great innovation gears [inside the Pentagon] but some of them were a little squeaky,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Replicator was meant to make these all click into place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atop the effort was the Defense Innovation Unit, tasked with bringing high-tech weapons into the military. Along with Hicks\u2019 staff, it surveyed the different parts of the Pentagon from the Army to the Air Force, asking what drones would matter most for a fight with China and what they could buy the fastest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, the team was working with military leaders in the Pacific and Congress, which later agreed to free up half a billion dollars for the effort (the same number made it into the next defense budget, which Congress has yet to pass).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the year since, the Pentagon has announced several systems<\/a> selected for the program: mostly underwater vehicles, small flying drones and loitering munitions meant to explode on impact. This last group will make up the bulk of the program, a congressional aide said. Of the 2,500 to 3,000 systems the Pentagon plans to deliver, over half will be the Switchblade 600, a kamikaze drone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hicks argued these results helped change the narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cReplicator really depended on having that reputational advantage internally to make it happen. Now the Hill and the press \u2014 that reputational advantage probably needed to prove out another year. I think we\u2019ve done that by just putting our heads down,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks observes a Defense Innovation Unit site walkthrough in Mountain View, California, Dec. 12, 2023. (DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Dress rehearsal\u2019<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

In a meeting last fall, another Pentagon official working on the program remembers getting goosebumps. Military leaders in the room were planning a Replicator \u201cdress rehearsal\u201d for early 2025 \u2014 a drill meant to prove how the weapons could all work together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was this moment where we all realized how real this is,\u201d said the official. It had gone from an idea to a table of the nation\u2019s top officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Hicks announced the program, it\u2019s earned real staying power. Officials across Washington cite it<\/a> as an example of how to jolt America\u2019s slow bureaucracy. And military leaders in the Pacific have been happy to have someone advocating for their priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last fall, the Pentagon announced a second version of the program<\/a>, this time focused on protecting American bases from incoming drones \u2014 a problem on display across the Middle East since Israel\u2019s war began in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the drill this year is also a sign of the issues Replicator has yet to address. For one, the military is still deciding where to station the drones, which so far have been relatively short-range and would struggle to enter a fight. The answer is likely to put them on ships, said Adm. Sam Papapro, the head of Indo-Pacific Command, at an event last November. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Military leaders are trying to make sure the drones can resist jamming \u2014 a huge problem in Ukraine \u2014 and how to make the weapons operate in synchrony. They\u2019re also trying to decide how to sustain the weapons, since these drones are meant to be \u201cattritable,\u201d the Pentagon\u2019s version of a plastic fork and knife compared to silverware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re now going from just buying the system to actually using it in an operationally relevant environment and assessing changes we need to make,\u201d said Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer and analyst at the Hudson Institute, where he follows the program closely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018A solvable problem\u2019<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

These tests won\u2019t address the largest critique often leveled at Replicator: that it didn\u2019t wasn\u2019t big enough. China has huge stores of weapons, beyond what Horowitz listed earlier, and they\u2019re growing.<\/a> Thousands of relatively small drones won\u2019t tip the military scales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe PRC has got 2,100 fighters, they\u2019ve got three aircraft carriers, they have a battle force of 200 destroyers. Well, Roger, we\u2019ve got a couple of drones,\u201d Paparo said in November, using the common abbreviation for the People\u2019s Republic of China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hicks staffers bristle at this critique. Replicator, they argue, was never meant to be the Pentagon\u2019s only insurance program for a war with China. It was meant to teach the Pentagon a new way of doing business. Even more, it wasn\u2019t like there were billions of extra dollars lying around for the program. Starting Replicator at its current scale was hard enough given how much the Pentagon bureaucracy can resist change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat Replicator did was juice the system and show that this is a solvable problem,\u201d Horowitz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, Hicks and other top Pentagon officials say this effort is only one part in a much larger engine designed to get the military more advanced weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview last month, the head of Pentagon research and engineering explained the point by pulling out a complicated flow chart, illustrating how the Defense Department brings a new weapon on board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s the entire ecosystem. This is how we fit together. It isn\u2019t [that] only one piece of the puzzle is important and the rest is irrelevant,\u201d said Heidi Shyu, tracing the Replicator section of the chart with her finger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even critics accepted this argument: They couldn\u2019t blame Replicator for not being something it was never meant to be. But Brose, the executive at Anduril, also said that the program\u2019s scope should factor into its legacy. If the U.S. needed a true crash program to help defend Taiwan, or other parts of the Pacific, then Replicator may have missed the moment, even if it\u2019s on track to meet its goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, that doesn\u2019t mean they don\u2019t want it to stick around. The Pentagon, at least, expects it to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInitiatives change names all the time,\u201d the first official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Courtney Albon contributed to this story.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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