Why Replicator is critical for the future of defense

The character of war continues to evolve with the proliferation of low-cost uncrewed and attritable systems. Powered by commercial innovation, AI, autonomy, and fielded in all domains across multiple conflict areas today, these systems are affordable and highly effective force multipliers to offset expensive and hard-to-replace billion-dollar platforms.

This evolution requires a corresponding shift in how we equip modern warfighters, and the Department of Defense deserves credit for laying out its vision with the “Replicator" initiative. Announced by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks in August, the Replicator initiative aims to “accelerate production and delivery at scale” of autonomous systems by 2025. This fleet of all-domain, attritable autonomous systems will deliver “affordable mass” to augment and extend America’s legacy inventory of costly and exquisite systems, serving as America’s vanguard within China’s anti-access, area-denial bubble.

Anduril has highlighted the need to scale these disruptive capabilities for several years. We commend Deputy Secretary Hicks for laying out a vision for Replicator and providing a path for DoD to rapidly field autonomous capabilities. Autonomous, attritable systems can identify and swarm enemy air defenses, extend the range and effectiveness of manned assets, significantly reduce risks to human operators, and force adversaries to exhaust expensive munitions stocks. We also commend DoD’s initial approach: to meet the aggressive delivery schedule that is tied to the threat assessment, the use of already-competed and prototyped platforms mitigates much of the schedule and cost risk that a new broad open development competition would entail.

Replicator provides the impetus to drive new defense capability delivery at a time of increasing aggression from our adversaries. Replicator is critical to deterrence — and the scope and scale of what is required to deter China will be significant. This cannot just be a one-year or two-year injection of resources if we are to drive true, long-term deterrence. In order to succeed, Replicator will need dedicated funding over multiple years.

These systems will provide U.S. and allied warfighters the capability edge they need to better shape, respond, deter, and win decisively in strategic competition. Today, the stakes could not be higher: Peer and near-peer adversaries are determined to degrade America’s qualitative military edge and will undoubtedly field significant numbers of uncrewed and autonomous systems of their own. The systems already fielded in Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Israel offer a sobering preview of what U.S. and allied forces can expect to face in the future. The choices made now on how warfighters fight with and command large numbers of autonomous, attritable systems, along with the scale of production that must be achieved, will determine their fate in the years ahead.

We applaud the efforts of DoD, in partnership with Congress, as they work to advance new capability for the warfighter. Anduril is ready to deliver and deploy autonomous systems at scale for Replicator.