Lee Ferran
US special operations forces are already a “big fan” of the Pentagon’s Replicator drone project, especially as the DoD imagines what a fight in the Pacific could look like, according to a senior official.
“First off, I think … it’ll field systems much more quickly than the standard defense industrial base process, procurement process,” Chris Maier, assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, told the Defense Writers Group this morning.
“And so I think from the SOF [special operations forces] perspective, because we often are the ones able to do smaller projects, work them more quickly, test them with operators — in some cases actually [in an] operational context — then we can in some cases be proof of concept for the Replicator that then, if something works, can be scaled up much more quickly through Replicator than” through a traditional defense contractor.
Replicator, a major initiative by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks unveiled a year ago, aims to crank out hundreds of unmanned platforms in record time, or as she put it, to deliver “capabilities at greater speed and scale while simultaneously burning down risk and alleviating systemic barriers across the department.” The first Replicator systems were delivered to servicemembers in April, Hicks previously said.
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