Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, meets with leadership of 1st Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Camp “Bull” Simons, Florida, on Feb. 28, 2024. (U.S. Army photos by Sgt. Taylor Zacherl)
WASHINGTON — U.S. special forces are already “big fans” of the Pentagon’s Replicator drone project, according to a senior official, particularly as the Defense Department envisions what combat in the Pacific might look like.
“First of all, I think this will get the systems ready for deployment much faster than the usual defense industry 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 that from the SOF (special forces) perspective, we are often the ones that can do smaller projects, turn around faster, test with operators – in some cases even in an operational context – that in some cases we can serve as a proof of concept for the replicator, which then, if something works, can be scaled up much faster through the replicator than through a traditional defense contractor.”
Replicator, a major initiative unveiled a year ago by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, aims to produce hundreds of unmanned platforms in record time, or as she put it, “deliver capabilities at greater speed and scale while reducing risk and breaking down systemic barriers across the department.” The first Replicator systems began shipping to military personnel in April, Hicks previously said.
RELATED TOPICS: Some Replicator Tranche 2 systems have already been selected, says DIU boss
One of the impetus for the project, according to Hicks, was to prepare for a possible conflict with China by being able to bring considerable “mass” to any fight. Today, Maier emphasized the value of such a strategy.
He said that as a “student of the Ukraine conflict,” this fight underscored that “mass matters. … and the Replicator Initiative really reaches that mass piece.”
Maier said that during a visit to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command last week, leaders there, including representatives of conventional forces, talked about the “value that they see in Replicator: It accelerates and catalyzes some of the efforts that otherwise probably wouldn’t go through our standard process as quickly. But it also gives us, I think, the ability … to fail fast.”
Such a program will be crucial for SOF in the Indo-Pacific, Maier said, because “it will be about placement and access” to potentially contested areas.
“It will be possible to get closer to places in smaller groups than large military formations or platforms can. And that’s where it’s going to be really important to be able to draw on capabilities that we can either bring with us or deploy quickly,” he said. “And that’s where mass is very important. And you want to be sure that mass works where it’s needed, and not when you’re alone and you’re afraid, so to speak, that the systems aren’t working.”
Elsewhere in the talk, Maier described the role of SOF in a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific as one in which special operations forces support joint forces — whether by better informing conventional force commanders about conditions on the ground or by leveraging relationships with local forces. That’s essentially the opposite of the way the counterterrorism effort that has dominated the past 20 years for the U.S. military has worked, in which joint forces primarily supported special operations forces.
Maier’s praise comes just weeks after Hicks suggested her signature initiative was making good progress thanks to support from lawmakers but was suffering from excessive congressional scrutiny.
“Since last October, we have held nearly 40 briefings before Congress, an average of about one per week,” she said on August 7. “This is for an initiative that represents 0.059 percent of the Department of Defense budget. Such an intense engagement is not scalable for Congress when it comes to the breadth of what we are trying to accomplish.”
RELATED TOPICS: Lawmakers and experts raise concerns about the Pentagon’s ambitious Replicator drone initiative
More generally, she said, “If this country is to transform its defense with the speed and scale required, the confidence of Congress must be significantly increased.”
