DoD Replicator initiative working on 2nd tranche of systems: official
NewsApril 23, 2024
SAN DIEGO, California. The Department of Defense is working on a second tranche of systems for the Replicator initiative, an effort to field thousands of autonomous systems across multiple domains over an 18- to 24-month time frame, a DoD official said at the XPONENTIAL 2024 exhibition on Tuesday.
DoD announced the Replicator initiative last August in response to operator needs and to make the services more agile. DoD worked with Congress to find money for the first tranche of systems, and officials are now already moving on to the second tranche, with future tranches planned beyond that, said Doug Beck, director of the Defense Innovation Unit.
The second tranche will include "some additional systems and capabilities," Beck said.
"Unfortunately, I'm still not in a place where I can talk publicly about all the pieces that are in there," he said. "But I will say they draw on all the great things the services are already doing ... as well as some new pieces we're bringing in."
Anything considered for the Replicator initiative must be capable of providing an autonomous capability that could be fielded within 18-24 months, he added.
The Replicator initiative is "about bringing all those folks together to solve these problems and solve them fast," he said. "It is working."
The broader goal is to institutionalize the capability to field systems faster across the Department of Defense.
"The team has gotten to a place that ordinarily would have taken a department two or three years or longer," he said. "And they've done it by breaking down some barriers and working together in new ways that historically we've done a few times around things like MRAP, but this is about doing that and institutionalizing the capability so we can do it again and again and again."
