Renamed the Defense Autonomous Working Group, the drone initiative is now conducting wargames and working on larger, longer-ranged attack drones, Adm. Sam Paparo and Pentagon CTO Emil Michael said.
INDOPACOM had the biggest request of these five COCOMS, asking for nearly $12 billion in additional funding.
The network transport architecture for NGC2 could be a hybrid approach that combines high assurance communications with 5G, WiFi, and multi-orbit satellites.
“Today, warfighters lack the unmanned systems needed to train for combat and prevail if called upon to use them,” DIU director Doug Beck said.
The LCD systems will “help to minimize risk to friendly forces, civilians, and infrastructure in the homeland and abroad,” DIU said in the release.
“I can't have every fleet commander buying their software or their robot. I mean, some of that can happen, obviously, but we do have to settle up," said Director of the Integrated Warfare (N9I) office, Rear Adm. Christopher Sweeney.
“Unlimited budgets don’t help the taxpayer and don’t automatically translate into military strength,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks also said today.
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
“We are seeing the strength of the joint teams that assemble to collaborate on the challenges of deploying autonomous systems including policy, software architecture, experimentation, and more,” said Pentagon AI chief Radha Plumb.
"The delivery of commercially available Company-Level Small UAS with support from the Replicator initiative will allow American soldiers to rapidly experiment, learn and innovate with these systems," said Army Chief Gen. Randy George.
The company plans to make "hundreds" of the new drone starting next year, which CEO Dino Mavrookas wants to be available once Navy contracting "catches up."
“We have no cap on the number of vendors involved," a DIU spokesperson said.
The GPS network continues to prove its unmatched reliability, and it’s only getting stronger.
"The expectation is that Replicator 2 will assist with overcoming challenges we face in the areas of production capacity, technology innovation, authorities, policies, open system architecture and system integration, and force structure," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
Chris Maier, assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, said that as "students of the Ukriane conflict," that fight has underscored that "mass matters."
Doug Beck, director of the DIU, said the department has “selected some systems already,” however “there’s other things that we are still kind of finalizing.”
Congress needs to stop grilling Pentagon officials about the Pentagon’s plan to bulk-buy cheap unmanned weapons and start actually helping, the Deputy Secretary of Defense said: “We’ve done nearly 40 Hill briefings since last October, averaging almost one a week. …That depth of engagement isn’t scalable for Congress.”