New US Replicator drones are getting tested in Ukraine

A new tranche of drones - including at least one being used against Russia in Ukraine - will join the Pentagon’s Replicator effort to accelerate the deployment of cheap autonomous systems, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced Wednesday.

Tranche 1.2 “will include systems in the air and maritime domains, as well as integrated software enablers that will enhance the autonomy and resilience of other Replicator systems,” the Defense Department said in a statement.

Among them: Anduril Industries’ Ghost-X and the Performance Drone Works C-100 UAS, as well as classified drones that include “low-cost long-range strike capabilities and maritime uncrewed systems,” according to the release.

Ghost-X and the C-100 UAS are already part of the Army’s company-level Small UAS effort, a program inspired in part by observations from the war in Ukraine.

Army Chief Gen. Randy George said in a statement that “Ukraine has demonstrated the value of small, attritable drones on the battlefield.”

Ukrainian fighters have been using Ghost-X since the first weeks of Russia’s expanded 2022 invasion, said a source familiar with the matter. Having to face off against advanced Russian electronic warfare systems has helped Anduril evolve techniques that could be applicable against similar high-tech adversaries like China.

For instance, the source said, Anduril has developed flying mesh networks to enable drone swarms to swap data even amid heavy electromagnetic warfare interference, “relaying that data along multiple UAS[es] so that they can have long data-chain links.”

The drones' high level of autonomy also helps them evade EW effects and interceptor missiles, the source said.

“Let's say that I'm relaying comms, and then all of a sudden, the Russians pop up an EW bubble. The drone can say, ‘OK, I expected that. I'm not even going to go to my fallback positions. I'm gonna fly over here. I'm gonna go into a place where their jammer - which I can triangulate - is not affecting my link anymore.’ So you get all these networks that physically reconfigure their geometry to be robust to jamming.”

Replicator is pushing more than just drones to the front lines. Software to enable better data collection and collaboration between drones is also essential to the effort - potentially more important than the individual systems themselves.

The Defense Innovation Unit, or DIU, has played a key role bringing new systems as well as the underlying software into the Replicator program, to make sure that as new drone types are added they all work together to achieve a combined effect.

“Combining cutting-edge hardware with cutting-edge software - the capabilities and needs of each pushing the bounds of what is possible with the other - is at the heart of the very best of technology in the commercial sector,” DIU Director Doug Beck said in a statement. “Replicator is harnessing this same synergy, ensuring we can adopt commercial best practices to iteratively develop, test, and ultimately field autonomous systems, both individually and collectively, at scale.”