Replicator Program Stays on Early 2025 Deployment, Official Says

The Department of Defense is still on schedule with its Replicator program to deploy thousands of unmanned systems across multiple battlefields by early 2025, Aditi Kumar, the Defense Innovation Unit’s deputy director of strategy, policy and national security partnerships, said.

The DIU is pinpointing all hurdles and working on the solutions to accelerate the Replicator’s first tranche that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks has selected, Kumar shared during a Hudson Institute discussion on technology as role operational challenges solutions. According to her, the Replicator exemplifies the focus on speed and scale to meet critical warfighting capabilities, the DOD said Friday. 

Kumar also agreed with other defense officials who saw the Replicator initiative not just as an isolated program for fielding a specific technology but rather as a process for overcoming innovation barriers.

The Replicator’s deployment offers key lessons on a process for quick autonomous system deployments that can be applied in future projects, she added.

DOD bodies, like the Deputy’s Innovation Steering Group that Hicks recently established with Eric Moore as head, have also helped overcome systemic barriers, Kumar also said.