Ingenuity and innovation remain at the heart of the U.S. military’s strategic advantage as it confronts the pressing challenges in the Indo-Pacific, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said as she unveiled the Defense Department’s initiative aimed at directly countering the People’s Republic of China’s rapid buildup of its armed forces.
Hicks said as China focuses on the sheer mass of its military, the U.S. will “out-match adversaries by out-thinking, out-strategizing and out-maneuvering them.”
Under the strategy, coined by Hicks as the replicator initiative, the Defense Department will field thousands of autonomous systems across multiple domains within the next 18 to 24 months.
Hicks revealed the strategy during her remarks at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies for Defense conference in Washington.
“Replicator is meant to help us overcome the PRC’s biggest advantage, which is mass,” she said. “More ships. More missiles. More people.”
She said, through the initiative, the U.S. will augment its manufacturing and mobilization capabilities “with our real comparative advantage, which is the innovation and spirit of our people.”
Even when mobilizing the U.S. economy and manufacturing base, rarely has the U.S. relied solely on its ability to match adversaries’ scale alone, Hicks said.
“To stay ahead, we’re going to create a new state of the art — just as America has before — leveraging attritable, autonomous systems in all domains — which are less expensive, put fewer people in the line of fire and can be changed, updated or improved with substantially shorter lead times,” she said.
In doing so, Hicks said, the U.S. will counter the PRC’s buildup, with “mass of our own,” that will be more difficult for adversaries to plan for and beat.
“With smart people, smart concepts and smart technology, our military will be more nimble, with uplift and urgency from the commercial sector,” she said.
The Defense Department has long invested in autonomous systems – including self-piloting ships and no-crew aircraft.
Hicks said those systems have proven to be lower cost alternatives to manned platforms and can be produced “closer to the tactical edge.”
“So now is the time to take all-domain, attritable autonomy to the next level: to produce and deliver capabilities to warfighters at the volume and velocity required to deter aggression, or win if we’re forced to fight,” she said.
Attritable capabilities refer to platforms that are unmanned and built affordably, allowing commanders to tolerate a higher degree of risk in employing them.
Under Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, defense leaders have deemed the PRC to be the United States’ “pacing challenge.”
The 2022 National Defense Strategy underscores the PRC’s efforts to expand and modernize “nearly every aspect” of the People’s Liberation Army as it aims to offset U.S. military advantages in the Indo-Pacific and, increasingly, around the globe.
Navy Adm. John C. Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, further highlighted the PRC’s military buildup during his remarks at Wednesday’s conference.
“They have focused very clearly on delivering a force capable to take on the United States,” Aquilino said.
“We ought to look at the Chinese to understand truly where they are and what they’re doing: the largest military buildup since World War II, both in conventional forces and in strategic nuclear [forces],” he said.
Aquilino said while the buildup is concerning, the U.S. focus on competing with the PRC is critical.
“The Deputy’s words on the delivery of outcomes with speed is encouraging,” he said.
Hicks said during her remarks that the replicator initiative is focused not only on production, but on the whole-of-department approach to innovation and the ability to quickly field technology.
“[W]hen the time is right, and when we apply enough leadership, energy, urgency and depth of focus, we can get it done,” she said. “That’s what America does.
“We must ensure the PRC leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression and concludes, ‘today is not the day’ — and not just today, but every day, between now and 2027, 2035, 2049 and beyond,”
Hicks said.
Photo: Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks speaks during the 2023 National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies for Defense conference in Washington, Aug. 28, 2023. – Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jack Sander
Source: US Department of Defense
The US Air Force wants to spend around $5.8 billion on up to 2,000 pilotless AI-powered drones, to serve alongside human pilots.
Earlier this month, colonel Tucker Hamilton, chief of the Department of Air Force’s AI Test and Operations accelerator, reported that the aerial arm of the US military flew the 30-foot-long (9.15 meter) XQ-58A Valkyrie drone for three hours in a first-of-its-kind AI-controlled flight test.
Now, the Air Force believes it can build up to 2,000 Valkyrie aircraft, each one costing around $3 million – well below the price of crewed fighter jets like the F-35 or F-22.
Congress must approve the five-year effort to construct the drone fleet, which is budgeted [PDF] to cost $5.8 billion over that period – with $3.03 billion required in FY 2028 alone.
The Air Force describes the project as working towards development of “Collaborative Combat Aircraft … capable of enhancing crewed weapon systems to achieve air superiority.”
The Air Force envisions multiple types of AI-powered Valkyrie drones tailored to perform roles like surveillance or resupply operations, or swarming as a group to fight alongside human pilots. Drones designed for different roles will be kitted out with appropriate mission-specific hardware.
In collaboration with Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, a private military contractor company based in San Diego, the Air Force has been developing uncrewed XQ-58A Valkyrie aircraft for years.
“Any Air Force drone [will be] designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force,” a Pentagon spokeswoman told the New York Times.
Major general Scott Jobe, the Air Force’s director of plans, programs, and requirements, Headquarters Air Combat Command, reportedly previously said: “I’m not going to have this robot go out and just start shooting at things … think of it as just an extension to your weapons bay if you’re in an F-22, F-35 or whatnot.”
The crewless aircraft will therefore recommend actions that will be signed off by human operators, who make the final call to drop bombs or fire missiles.
That arrangement will reportedly be tested later this year in a mission that assesses Valkyrie’s ability to chase and wipe out an enemy target in a simulated scenario over the Gulf of Mexico. The experiment will also push the aircraft’s AI flight software into a dogfighting scenario. No weapons will be carried.
The Air Force is looking to contract with private operators, like Kratos or Shield AI, to develop the software and hardware components separately.
It could take between five and ten years to build an AI drone capable of real air combat, officials estimated.