Sea drones are just one of the many ways the war in Ukraine is forcing the Pentagon to think differently. So are the cheap, hobby-store drones Kyiv is using to find and knock out Russian armored vehicles. And if Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks gets her way, these battlefield innovations will change the way U.S. defense contractors think as well.
Ms. Hicks surprised the entire defense establishment (and many on Capitol Hill) when she announced in late August that the Pentagon aims to build low-cost, expendable drones to cover every corner of the modern battlefield. Ms. Hicks said she aims to produce “multiple thousands” of self-propelled sensors, surveillance platforms and eventually weapons, using available technology, and that she wants to field them in the next two years. That time frame, in Pentagon terms, is unimaginably fast, but everything about her announcement was designed to signal a new way of doing business.
Ms. Hicks named the approach Replicator, partly after a hypothetical Star Trek device that creates material objects on demand and partly because of the sheer numbers envisioned. But the name owes something to the desire by Ms. Hicks and her boss, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, to spawn other off-the-shelf, quick-turnaround solutions at all six services.
There is little mystery about what ails the Pentagon. Ms. Hicks calls the military’s ability to stretch procurement that should take years into decades “the production valley of death.” The Pentagon excels, she says, at building weapons systems that are “expensive,” “exquisite” and few in number. It is time, she says, to also make platforms that are “small, smart, cheap and many.”
These are not words that one typically hears from a Pentagon deputy. But such candor is long overdue. Over the past decade, the military has tried to get non-weapons makers involved in defense contracting, opened offices in Silicon Valley and held meetings with tech companies whose work in artificial intelligence makes them as vital to security as submarine and missile makers. All of these steps have been useful, but none has changed the game.
The defense community’s reaction to Replicator might be politely described as skeptical, chiefly because Ms. Hicks has not put a dollar figure on how much she is willing to bet on the program. (The Pentagon says it has enough money in existing budgets to get it started.) What would get weapons makers’ attention would be a dedicated office to oversee the project — and a $250 million budget to start.
Put another way, the first step is to get busy. The Pentagon should quickly put some money on the table: Buy 100 drones from one company. Buy 100 more from another. Give them to commanders to adapt and improve. And then repeat the process.
And while the United States is supplying Ukraine with millions of dollars in weapons, the United States should engage in some old-fashioned tech transfer: Send a team of experts to Kyiv and learn from Ukrainians about how to build drones that are small, lethal and cheap virtually from scratch. Then, bring that knowledge back home and re-engineer it to suit U.S. needs. That will remind Americans who are skeptical of continued support for Ukraine that the best alliances are mutually beneficial.
Finally, there isn’t an American university that doesn’t boast someone, somewhere, tinkering in a lab with drones. Finding drone components (many are made in China) is getting harder, so why not make sourcing those parts — and concocting smart workarounds for drone production — something of a national contest? Most schools would jump to participate. That would give defense contractors some long-overdue competition — and sustain innovation where it flourishes best — at the ground level.
Ukraine’s on-the-fly innovations and the dramatic buildup of China’s forces over the past decade might yet combine to shake the defense industrial complex out of its worst habits. But some things will never change: To get results, the Pentagon will need to put its money where its mouth is.
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