Top Navy officials have called for more coordinated activities surrounding the Department of Defense’s Replicator initiative.
Rear Adm. Christopher Sweeney, director of Integrated Warfare at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said in an AFCEA West panel Tuesday that military services need to sync up, especially when it comes to acquiring software.
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Establishing an Enterprise-Wide Strategy for Replicator
“I can’t have every fleet commander buying their software or their robot,” commented Sweeney during the event. “I mean, some of that can happen, obviously, but we do have to settle up.”
He stressed that there should be agreement in buying some of the technologies that will be used as part of the program, whether in autonomous, command and control, and heterogenous software or a fight from the Maritime Operations Center collaborative.
Rear Adm. Elizabeth Okano, commander of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, also admitted during the panel that military services are “not organized correctly” and not incentivized to cooperate.
Instead, she explained that certain program managers are lauded for their cost-schedule performance and not for their initiative to unlock and share new information with other DOD components.
Okano called for an enterprise-level strategy that can be implemented not just within the Navy, but across all military services to coordinate action and make Replicator a multi-domain operation.
Replicator Program Updates
The Replicator initiative aims to accelerate the development and delivery of advanced capabilities to warfighters.
In November, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, a Wash100 Award recipient, expanded the program to include air and maritime systems and applications. The new capabilities are expected to enable the Pentagon to deliver all-domain attritable autonomous systems to warfighters by August 2025.
The program entered its second phase, dubbed Replicator 2.0, in October.
According to former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, also a Wash100 Award winner, Replicator 2.0 will focus on countering small unmanned aerial system threats and providing C-sUAS systems to troops within 24 months after Congress approves funding.