The Revelance of Replicator

February 12, 2024

By Mike Dodd, USMC (Ret)

The Department of Defense (DoD) and our Defense Industrial Base (DIB) received a wake-up call on January 28. A horrific, tragic, yet predictable wake-up call. An Iranian-backed Iraqi paramilitary faction launched a drone attack on Tower 22, a remote U.S. outpost in the Jordanian desert. It claimed the lives of three U.S. soldiers and injured 47 others.

The weapon of choice was an Iranian-made Shahed 136 kamikaze drone. Let’s be honest, this is the new iteration of an old school ballistic or cruise missile. Though, instead of a price tag in the tens of millions of dollars, it’s cheap (anywhere from $20-60,000). And unlike warheads of the past that were exclusively property of professional militaries, the Shahed--and smaller, cheaper drones--are readily available to even a relatively unknown paramilitary group.

Drone strikes are not new; however, this was the first time since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, that U.S. service members were killed by an enemy strike. And while the DoD and DIB are working on counter-drone (C-UAS) technologies as part of the Replicator initiative, this terrible incident is proof we need to work faster at identifying and fielding new technologies at scale and, frankly, on sale.   

Remember, everything that’s happening in the Middle East, and in Ukraine for that matter, is being closely watched by China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is taking notes—where are U.S. vulnerabilities? How can those vulnerabilities be exploited?

One of those vulnerabilities, far from the battlefield, is our open American society. The DoD recently released a list of more than three dozen “Chinese military companies” operating directly or indirectly in the United States. According to the DoD public release, “The PRC's (People’s Republic of China) Military-Civil Fusion strategy supports the modernization goals of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) by ensuring it can acquire advanced technologies and expertise developed by PRC companies, universities, and research programs that appear to be civilian entities.”

And, during a recent visit I had with U.S. Senator Mike Braun, he very correctly pointed out that, “We create the technology, they (the Chinese), mostly steal it. That’s got to stop.”

All of this points to our need to push the entire defense ecosystem—government, industry and academia to work faster, cheaper and more effectively. We need to develop, build and acquire attritable autonomous systems at scale quickly to meet the growing future threat from the Chinese and current threat from global terror and paramilitary organizations. The days of firing a multimillion-dollar warhead to take down a drone need to be a thing of the past.

Thanks to Replicator, this is happening. In fact, during a meeting, last week, of the Defense Business Board, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks noted, “that DoD is learning lessons from the Replicator initiative that could be applied throughout the Department. Replicator shows where improved business processes can deliver cost-effective capability.”

Tragedy, regrettably, often accelerates action and prompts change. Let’s make sure the lives lost and those changed forever on January 28 were not in vain. Let’s push forward with the Replicator initiative and make attritable autonomous systems at scale a mainstay of our DoD arsenal. Because, as always, we must never (ever) fight a fair fight.