Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro participates in a media interview during a shipyard tour at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class T. Logan Keown/Released)
WASHINGTON — Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced today the service has established a Disruptive Capabilities Office, saying the DCO and a counterpart Marine Corps office would “both help deliver on the Department of the Navy’s contribution to the ‘Replicator initiative.'”
Breaking Defense exclusively reported in August that the service was mulling the creation of the DCO as a means to more rapidly deliver useful technology to the operational fleet.
RELATED: Navy Weighs Creation Of ‘Disruptive Capabilities’ Office To Rapidly Field Tech To Fleet
“This new organization will push the bounds of rapidly delivering warfighting capability though the innovative application of existing and new systems, and harnessing today’s exponential growth in technology,” Del Toro said today during a ceremony at the Pentagon celebrating the Naval Research Laboratory.
“Through rapid experimentation and prototyping, the DCO will work collaboratively with stakeholders from across our department focusing on delivering solutions to our warfighters at a pace and scale to close our fleet’s most critical capability gaps,” he continued.
According to documents and sources that spoke to Breaking Defense, the service as part of creating the DCO was also considering the disestablishment of the Unmanned Task Force started by former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday. A spokesperson for Del Toro did not immediately respond to a question from Breaking Defense today about whether the UTF had been disbanded.
The secretary said the DCO would work with the Marine Corps’ Rapid Capabilities Office, a smaller agency with similar goals for quickly buying and fielding useful warfighting tech, as well as the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit to contribute to Replicator.
Replicator is a relatively new project established by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks in August with the general aim of producing and fielding thousands of unmanned systems designed to counter China.
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