By Mike Stone
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon introduced on Wednesday that it’s going to add two new varieties of drones and extra networking software program to its bold Replicator initiative aimed toward quickly placing 1000’s of drones within the fingers of the army.
Deputy Secretary of Protection Kathleen Hicks mentioned the Anduril Industries Ghost-X and the Efficiency Drone Works C-100 UAS have been chosen beneath the Replicator program to assist fill the Military’s Firm-Degree Small UAS effort.
The Replicator initiative, introduced final yr, is an bold effort to rapidly muster and deploy giant numbers of low cost drones by August 2025. The Pentagon focused spending $500 million yearly on the plan to community and job 1000’s of low cost, sensible fight drones for any future battle.
The Replicator 1 initiative was designed to be a “pathfinder” to a brand new means for the Pentagon to rapidly resolve a tough downside, one thing which President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration might use to streamline protection acquisition.
A future second iteration of Replicator, dubbed Replicator 2 will deal with the right way to defeat enemy drones.
As we speak’s announcement is for the second tranche of buys beneath the Replicator 1 initiative.
The primary tranche included AeroVironment (NASDAQ:) Inc’s Switchblade 600 loitering munition system uncrewed floor autos (USV), that are able to circling a goal whereas ready for the opportune second to strike. It additionally included uncrewed aerial techniques (UAS) and counter-uncrewed aerial techniques (c-UAS) of assorted sizes and payloads from a number of distributors.
Categorized techniques, together with low-cost long-range strike capabilities, are additionally a part of immediately’s “Replicator 1.2” announcement, although they weren’t named.
