AeroVironment’s Switchblade 600 loitering munition. Photo: AeroVironment
The contractor supplying Switchblade loitering munitions to the Defense Department under the first phase of the Replicator initiative has delivered “hundreds” of systems to a customer who has fielded them, a Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) official said on August 28.
Deliveries of the AeroVironment-built Switchblade drone munitions have demonstrated the success of Replicator 1, Sarah Pearson, director of commercial engagement for DIU, said during a panel discussion at the NDIA Emerging Technologies conference.
Pearson declined to disclose the customer but the Army last year said it would buy and field more than a 1,000 AV Switchblade 600s over the next year under Replicator. The “hundreds” delivered so far that Pearson mentioned is the first time DoD has put a number on the Switchblades delivered under Replicator.
“We consider the problem set to have been met,” Pearson told reporters after the panel. “We were able to field hundreds, not multiple 1,000s, sticking with hundreds. We are transitioning the capability and one of our smartest lines with it to a specific service to start. And so, from a DIU perspective it was a prototype effort. We are now transitioning.”
Last week, T.S. Allen, DIU’s former director for Replicator 1, said when he left DIU “a couple of months ago,” the unit had delivered “hundreds of drones to warfighters, not just getting them to some exercise in Indiana but actually getting them out to the joint force, which was really exciting.”
Speaking during panel hosted by the Brookings Institution, Allen said, “We put thousands more on contract and when I left, they were still rolling off the assembly line. So, I count that as a win, and sort of, mission accomplished.”
Last December, Wahid Nawabi, AV’s chairman, president, and CEO, said on a company earnings call that it had begun Switchblade 600 deliveries for Replicator, highlighting that AV is the “poster child of that entire initiative.”
Then Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced the Replicator initiative in August 2023, with a goal to acquire and field thousands of affordable all-domain, attritable autonomous unmanned systems by August 2025 to counter China in the Indo-Pacific theater (Defense Daily, Aug. 28, 2023). Since then, DoD has said Anduril Industries Altius-600 loitering munition and Ghost-X unmanned aircraft system (UAS) are part of Replicator, along with the Performance Drone Works C-100 UAS, and other low-cost long-range strike capabilities and maritime uncrewed systems that are classified.
DIU last November also announced software awards to seven companies for command and control, and autonomous collaborative teaming under Replicator.
Pearson said Replicator has demonstrated that once a “clear demand signal” is set, manufacturing timelines for the systems of interest can be reduced, and vendors can surge production capacity.
“Replicator is a perfect use case,” she said. “We said exactly how much and people said they could surge.”
Another benefit of the Replicator effort has been the test and evaluation piece, Pearson told the audience. With autonomous systems, “you learn through failure,” and that learning is happening, resulting in fixes. It’s better to have these systems “collide” with one another than having a person “pay the price,” she said.
“So, as long as we can train and continue retraining models and devices instead of people, that’s a win,” she said. “And Replicator helped us establish that.”
A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.