Sentry Staff
The United States Department of Defense’s (DOD) Replicator initiative is accelerating development and delivery of state-of-the-art hardware to the warfighter. Now the effort has turned its focus on new software to power those machines.
The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), the DOD organization focused on fielding and scaling commercial technology across the U.S. military at commercial speeds, announced in November 2024 contract awards for two commercial solutions openings (CSO) earlier in the year in collaboration with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), the Military Services, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO), and other components across DOD.
“We believe that best in breed commercial software solutions can significantly enhance DOD modernization efforts,” Doug Beck, DIU’s director, said in a news release. “Many leading AI and autonomy firms are outside of our traditional defense industrial base, and DIU is working actively with partners across the Department to bring the very best capabilities from the U.S. tech sector to bear in support of our most critical warfighter needs. This latest step in the Replicator initiative is a critical example of that teamwork in action.”
Under the first CSO, Opportunistic, Resilient & Innovative Expeditionary Network Topology, DOD sought solutions to improve the resilience of command and control (C2) for all-domain attritable autonomous (ADA2) systems.
“We are buying this capability independently of the hardware systems, and so we need to be able to have open architectures, government-owned architectures, to ensure that the software that we’re bringing in is one being upgraded and then integrated into all manner of hardware systems, which may then require their own hardware fixes to enable that,” Aditi Kumar, DIU’s deputy director for strategy, policy and national security partnerships, told Defense One magazine. “That is something we’re going to test out as we mature these integrated enablers. We are going to demonstrate their integration with the other systems in the Replicator portfolio across multiple domains, and we’ll be able to test that out.”
The second CSO, Autonomous Collaborative Teaming, asked providers for solutions to automate coordination of swarms of hundreds or thousands of uncrewed assets across multiple domains to improve lethality and efficiency.
Nearly 300 proposed solutions to the two CSOs were submitted by 251 companies, DIU reported, and DOD chose seven companies to develop prototypes.
“One need not actually achieve complete air and maritime superiority over a space when an adversary is trying to gain it. One need only perhaps deny it to the other, and can potentially do that at low cost,” Adm. Sam Paparo, USINDOPACOM Commander, said at the November 2024 National Security Innovation Forum hosted by the Pallas Foundation in Washington D.C., according to Defense One. “We’ve seen that actually in practice, and have learned from that, from Ukraine in the Black Sea, where a Slava cruiser was destroyed and sunk [by a Ukrainian sea drone.] And it’s important that we learn that lesson from that and the Black Sea.”
Since Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks’ announcement of the Replicator initiative 15 months ago, the Department-wide effort has accelerated the acquisition of thousands of ADA2 systems. The software procurements will enable these systems to seamlessly connect with one another across forces and domains, laying the foundation for the Department’s broader push towards collaborative autonomy.
“This is a concrete example of the collaboration between DIU and CDAO that leverages enterprise policy, software architecture, and experimentation to accelerate and deliver critical capabilities to warfighters,” said CDAO lead Dr. Radha Plumb, whose organization plays a key role in Replicator’s software integrated enablers. “This demonstrates how the Department can leverage commercial solutions and rapidly prototype, field and scale capabilities to address the operational needs of the joint force.”
Replicator’s priority is rapidly delivering capabilities for forces in USINDOPACOM to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s munitions buildup, and the solutions delivered will eventually scale across the entire joint force.
“Replicator is cutting across silos and accelerating the pace of development for autonomous systems,” said U.S. Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “This effort is serving as a pathfinder, and we are learning lessons about processes and technology that will apply to future problems. This will allow us to continue to expand the use of uncrewed systems.”