These drones made the Pentagon's cut for Replicator
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
A C-100 drone hovers over troops. Photo: David Hylton/DVIDS/PDW
Pentagon watchers are getting more detail about the high-stakes, hush-hush Replicator project and its growing emphasis on assembly line prowess — not just fancy blueprints.
Why it matters: Amid interrogations about production levels and stockpile health, Replicator promises to set the pace for cheap, fast, proliferated weapons.
- It's a bet that a behemoth bureaucracy can keep up with a breakneck commercial sector and a rollercoaster security environment.
Driving the news: The Defense Department lifted the veil of secrecy last week. Here's what we now know:
- More than 500 companies large and small want in. A fraction are actually playing ball.
- Anduril is providing its Altius-600 and Ghost-X drones, as well as its autonomous Barracuda-500 missile through the Air Force's Enterprise Test Vehicle program. Three other companies are working ETV, as well.
- Performance Drone Works is chipping in its C-100 Unmanned Aerial System, already part of the Army's Company-Level Small UAS effort.
- AeroVironment is supplying its Switchblade-600.
- Equipment the Pentagon doesn't want to publicly discuss includes "low-cost, long-range strike capabilities and maritime uncrewed systems." (DefenseScoop reported Anduril's 3-ton Dive-LD as a contender.)
Anduril Industries CEO Brian Schimpf and PDW CEO Ryan Gury told Axios attitudes are changing.
- "It's about, 'How do we get the department to just move faster?'" Schimpf said at the Future of Defense summit in Washington. "There isn't, like, a five-year research program to figure out exactly what they need. They assessed what worked, are scaling it, and are moving out."
- "We're starting to see a huge swell in small robotics," Gury said in a separate interview.
- "We want truly tactical assets capable of kinetics and [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and signals intelligence] in the hands of every soldier."
Catch up quick: Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks introduced Replicator in August 2023.
Yes, but: In analysis first shared with Axios, advocacy group Public Citizen described it as a "mad dash for Silicon Valley's AI weapons."
- "Tech companies have swept into the military-industrial space with gusto, claiming to bring an innovative edge to an otherwise clunky and slow-moving, albeit lucrative, industry," it reads.
- "The question is not if war robots can be made, but whether or not they should be."
The bottom line: The Pentagon needs to nail this. The drone-counter-drone race is not one the U.S. wants to lose.
