The Pentagon’s Replicator initiative envisions swarms of low-cost autonomous machines that could remake the American arsenal.
The initiative, announced by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, is meant to accelerate the invention of military technology.On August 28th, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, announced what she called the Replicator initiative—an all-hands-on-deck effort to modernize the American arsenal by adding fleets of, unmanned, relatively cheap weapons and equipment. She described these machines as “attritable,” meaning that they can suffer attrition without compromising a mission.
In one sense, Hicks’s announcement, during an address titled “The Urgency to Innovate” at a meeting of National Defense Industrial Association, did not signal a wholly new approach. Five years ago, for example, thewas already calling for major investments in artificial intelligence, noting that “we cannot expect success fighting tomorrow’s conflicts with yesterday’s weapons or equipment.” Since then, the D.O.D.
In another way, though, the Replicator initiative is a radical departure from business as usual in the Department of Defense. It is meant to accelerate the invention of military technology in order to change the way the United States fights wars and practices deterrence. Replicator, Hicks declared, would “field attritable autonomous systems at scale of multiple thousands in multiple domains within the next eighteen to twenty-four months.
“In my entire career, the military strategy has been to build these exquisite and expensive systems, which are incredibly effective,” Chris Gentile, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who is now the vice-president of EpiSci, a defense contractor that develops autonomous systems, told me. “I flew stealth fighters in the Air Force. I flew the F-22. It’s an amazing airplane, but we only bought a hundred eighty-seven of them.
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