Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Commerce Department revokes more export licenses to China’s Huawei

Substack courts TikTokers with new ‘creators’ program

Indiana primary updates: Mike Braun wins Republican governor race

France tries to shed its rude reputation ahead of the Olympics

Don’t be a jerk at the airport: A guide for headphones

The new cure-all for vacation excess: the IV drip 

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

Carolyn Hax: Family pushes siblings to ‘make amends’ after their mother’s death

Miss Manners: I’m offended by a golfer’s skirt choice

Ask Amy: I want to be closer with my brother. He never reaches out to me.

RFK Jr’s ‘history lesson’ on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine flunks the fact test

No, posting is not better political activism than talking to voters

The legal — and political — stakes of Stormy Daniels on the stand

The FTC’s noncompete clause rule goes too far

The next global crisis could come from the sun. We should prepare now.

Russia is using toxic chemical weapons, wrecking a ban it helped create

The Trump-Biden battle over the 2017 tax cut

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

Middle East conflict live updates: Israel says it has reopened key aid crossing; U.S. paused bomb shipments to Israel

U.S. signals optimism for Gaza cease-fire as Israel moves into Rafah 

Nats go over .500 the hard way by beating the O’s and Corbin Burnes

A look at what has changed since the Nationals were last above .500

Baseball can crush rookies. Why hasn’t it crushed Trey Lipscomb?

How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world

In photos: The scene after a deadly tornado strikes Oklahoma

Fashion previews, protests, parties: The scene surrounding the Met Gala

Indy Star bars columnist from Caitlin Clark’s games after awkward exchange

The Washington Post wins three Pulitzer Prizes

US-VOTE-POLITICS-ECONOMY-BIDEN

Big Tech news and how to take control of your data and devices

See more coverage in your recommendations

Technology

Tips delivered to your inbox twice weekly

The Tech Friend newsletter

Business and Tech alerts

Thomas Peter

The war in Ukraine has shown the value of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/26/drones-ai-ukraine-war-innovation/" target=_blank>low-cost drone swarms </a>in modern warfare. Now the Pentagon is planning to build an army of thousands of small, cheap drones in hopes of spurring U.S. drone production and cutting China’s dominance of that market.

American drone makers are hoping the Pentagon’s “Replicator” program will give a shot in the arm to U.S. manufacturing. Defense experts say there is a need for Washington to build a drone supply chain that doesn’t run through China, due to the small but real risk of a future war between the two rivals.

“We have learned an enormous amount as a department about how to mobilize the industrial base in new ways in order to support the needs that we’re seeing, for example, in Ukraine,” Doug Beck, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, said at a news conference Thursday. The rising challenge from China is an impetus for the program, he said.

The Pentagon is aiming to produce “thousands” of drones through Replicator as early as the end of next year.

Paul Scharre, executive vice president at the Center for a New American Security, who previously worked at the Defense Department developing its autonomous weapons policy, called the timeline challenging, given the lengthy process of wrangling defense budgets.

“The goal is a bold and ambitious one,” Scharre said. “The clock is ticking.”

While “Replicator” most famously refers to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Star_Trek)" target=_blank>the fictional machine from the “Star Trek” television series </a>that conjures things out of thin air, DIU officials say the name is meant to reflect that they are developing a process they can “replicate” in other industries. Beck said drones are their first target — “Replicator One” — but they plan to turn to other technologies.

China overwhelmingly dominates the global consumer drone market, with Shenzhen-based DJI occupying some 70 percent market share with its budget-friendly flying robots. U.S. officials say it’s prudent to develop alternative sources, with the U.S.-China relationship expected to remain in tense competition for years to come. In a worst-case scenario of a war on the island of Taiwan, a geopolitical flash point off the coast of China, the U.S. military would want to send in drones that aren’t made in China.

Gregory C. Allen, former director of strategy at the Defense Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said the U.S. military has long procured small numbers of top-of-the-line drones, such as the $220 million Global Hawk. But the war in Ukraine has shown the utility of also having large numbers of low-cost drones that can be sent on missions they are unlikely to return from, he said.

“It’s not just a doubling down on drones, but a re-envisioning of what the cost-per-performance paradigm needs to be for drones,” said Allen, now a director of an AI center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Ukrainian soldiers have been sending droves of small, cheap, commercial drones into battle, some for reconnaissance, others rigged with bombs for one-way flights. The drones — many of which are made in China and cost about $2,000 each — have succeeded in inflicting millions of dollars of damage to Russian military equipment. But they also are susceptible to Russian jamming of their communications signals. The U.K.-based Royal United Services Institute has estimated that Ukraine is going through 10,000 drones a month.

Russia has been racing to produce its own army of self-detonating drones based on Iranian technology by summer 2025, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/08/17/russia-iran-drone-shahed-alabuga/" target=_blank>The Washington Post has reported</a>.

“Drones used to be toys. Now everyone’s realizing how important they are,” said Jeff Thompson, founder of Salt Lake City-based drone maker Red Cat, who recently returned from a trip to Ukraine and said some of his company’s drones are in use in the war there.

U.S. military planners are increasingly favoring a strategy of building large fleets of cheap, autonomous drones that can supplement human-flown aircraft. “Loyal wingman” drones are being developed to fly alongside expensive new jets like the F-35. “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/07/07/ai-weapons-us-military/" target=_blank>Loitering munitions</a>” — drones that can circle the battlefield and divebomb targets on their own — are being developed by numerous countries, and have already seen combat in Libya, Armenia and Ukraine.

The push is opening up opportunities for smaller tech companies to compete with the giant military contractors that have dominated the industry for years. On Friday, military tech start-up Anduril unveiled a new jet-powered drone called Roadrunner that can be launched to intercept enemy planes, and return to a base if it doesn’t end up being used against a target.

“This radical shift in thinking allows for large-scale defensive launches at extraordinarily low cost,” Anduril said in its announcement.

There is still considerable skepticism about the Replicator program in Washington, partly because it lacks its own budget. It’s also unclear whether the Pentagon will buy enough drones on an annual basis to sustain an expansion in the U.S. industrial base.

“It could be an inflection point,” said Loren Thompson, a defense consultant with the nonprofit Lexington Institute. “Or it could just be the latest fashionable flourish where we get a little carried away without really understanding what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on cyber, information technologies and innovation, is among those who have raised the concern that without a budget, Replicator might cannibalize other programs. In a statement, Gallagher said the initial announcement of Replicator<b> </b>in August “left much to be desired,” but a “cautious level of optimism” has since developed. He said it remained worrisome that the Pentagon’s drone procurement had been so slow that a new initiative seemed warranted.

“We must also address what seems to be a lingering problem within the Department of Defense: that it takes intervention from senior Pentagon leadership to quickly and effectively deploy critical technologies to the battlefield,” he said.

The project is being directed  by the DIU, a unit of the Defense Department established in 2015 with the mission of helping the military assimilate leading commercial technologies. Allen described it as akin to a diplomatic organization between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley, operating on a shoestring budget, but with the remit to make big deals happen. “It’s almost like the Department of Defense’s embassy in Silicon Valley,” he said.

Former DIU director Michael Brown said the unit had begun working with domestic manufacturers to make small drones with stronger cybersecurity and U.S.-made key components during his tenure, 2018 to 2022, but that the companies lacked consistent, large-scale orders.

“The part that was missing from that was a large demand signal from the military,” he said. He said the Replicator program is how Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, who is the Defense Department’s primary proponent of the idea, is trying to “create that demand signal.”

Just how much momentum the Replicator program gets may depend on funding. The House of Representatives has <a href="https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/2023/06/23/house-panel-eyes-billion-dollar-pentagon-fund-to-push-commercial-tech/" target=_blank>proposed a new $1 billion fund for DIU</a> as part of defense appropriations for 2024, but the Senate has not agreed to it. If DIU doesn’t secure an expanded budget, it will need to rely on reprogramming funds from other parts of the defense budget.

U.S. drone makers have been vying for a spot in the Replicator program, even as many details of the initiative remain unclear.

“It’s very compelling,” Red Cat’s Thompson said. “I hope we’re in there.”

Thompson said his company is in the process of selling its consumer division that manufactures in China, and all of their remaining manufacturing will take place at a new factory in Salt Lake City, which began production in September. He said the factory has a little under 100 workers, with the capacity to produce thousands of drones a month. Their drones start at $14,800 now, a price point that he said could be lowered with larger-scale production.

Industry executives say it’s unlikely that U.S. drone makers will be able to match the prices of China’s DJI, which has benefited from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/02/01/china-funding-drones-dji-us-regulators/" target="_blank">investments by China’s government</a>, as well as lower labor costs. DJI’s popular “Mavic” line of consumer drones starts at $1,599. DJI did not respond to a request for comment.

The Arlington, Va.-based drone maker AeroVironment also says it’s hoping for a spot in the program. “We have not only invested in the maturation of such disruptive technologies, but also in the production capability and capacity to make them in large volumes at the levels of reliability that the U.S. DoD expects,” AeroVironment CEO Wahid Nawabi said in a statement.

Mark Valentine, president of global government for California-based drone maker Skydio, said what U.S. drone makers need more than anything is consistent demand, so they can plan their investments and parts orders.

“Many of these things are not trivial as far as expenses go,” he said. “If you run on the high side, you end up spending a lot of money for these long lead items, and they’ll sit on the shelf. On the other side, you could be in a position where you’ve got a lot of demand coming in that you can’t meet.”

Small drones are also expected to be used more widely across civilian sectors in coming years, though it is uncertain just how big the market will be. Doron Kempel, CEO of New York-based personal security company Bond, said police in Coral Gables, Fla., are using their company’s drone for security at events like Fourth of July gatherings.

A bill was introduced in the House last month that would prohibit the federal government from purchasing drones manufactured in China and other countries deemed national security threats. The revelation that <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/foreign/fbi-and-dhs-confirm-buying-and-using-chinese-drones-as-ban-hasnt-happened" target="_blank">the FBI was buying and using DJI drones </a>caused consternation in Washington last year.

The United States saw a spate of drone start-ups pop up a decade ago when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos declared ambitions <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/12/01/amazon-wants-to-deliver-packages-in-30-minutes-with-drones/" target=_blank>to deliver packages by drone across the nation</a>. (Bezos owns The Post. Interim CEO Patty Stonesifer sits on Amazon’s board.) Many of those start-ups have since died out in the face of stiff price competition from DJI and as widespread drone-based deliveries have not materialized.

Eva Dou is a Washington-based reporter covering technology policy for the Washington Post. A Detroit native, she was previously China business reporter for the Post. 

Eva Dou

Carleton University, BA in Journalism and Global Politics

Gerrit De Vynck is a tech reporter for The Washington Post. He writes about Google, artificial intelligence and the algorithms that increasingly shape society. He previously covered tech for seven years at Bloomberg News.

Gerrit De Vynck

washpost

Pentagon builds ‘Replicator’ drone army to combat China market dominance

the-washington-post

Ukrainian border guard launches a drone he uses to survey the border to Romania in Tyachiv

Reuters

Help Desk

Artificial Intelligence

Internet Culture

Space

Tech Policy

Tech

prism://prism.query/two-sites,/technology,/politics/powerpost/the-technology-202?limit=20

prism://prism.query/site,/technology/tech-policy&limit=20

prism://prism.query/site,/national-security&limit=20

Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.

National Security

The Washington Post's coverage of national security issues, including the military, intelligence, justice, and foreign policy.