Detailed budget materials are being released on a rolling basis this week, but the officials provided insights into the nearly $1 trillion spending plan in an off-camera press briefing Thursday morning.

“This budget is the first year that we are calling out — specifically — our autonomy line in its own section. So, it will be $13.4 billion for autonomy and autonomous systems,” a senior defense official told DefenseScoop. 

“For counter [unmanned aerial systems], the total request is $3.1 billion across the services,” they also confirmed. 

The new requests for additional drone and counter-drone funding come as the U.S. military confronts serious challenges integrating and defending against the rapidly evolving weapons, which often cost much less to produce than the multimilllion-dollar missiles that have been deployed to take them down.

The senior defense official supplied a high-level breakdown on the robotics and autonomy-enabling budget lines.

“For unmanned and remotely-operated aerial vehicles, it’s $9.4 billion; autonomous ground vehicles, $210 million; on the water autonomous systems, $1.7 billion; underwater capabilities, $734 million; and enabling capabilities — that’s the autonomy software, the things that underlie all these systems, working and operating together as a central brain — it’s $1.2 billion to work across all those platforms on autonomy,” they said.

A senior Navy official at the briefing also pointed to what they consider to be a “big increase” associated with autonomy investments for the sea service.

“[It’s] $5.3 billion across all systems. And that’s $2.2 billion above FY 2025. That includes procuring three MQ-25s, which we’ll have our first flight in 2026 — and then additional unmanned air [assets], new efforts in unmanned undersea and in unmanned surface, to include procuring our medium unmanned surface vessel. So, we have a lot of efforts across all domains,” the senior Navy official told DefenseScoop.

Two aircraft carrier strike groups operating in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility are “engaged in combat every day” against enemy-launched drones, they noted.

“We have the [USS Gerald R. Ford] that is just now deploying. Ford will deploy with some additional counter-UAS capabilities, and then we’ll continue to look and learn and develop those kits that we sent before, and [applying] part of what we’re learning,” the senior Navy official said.

Representatives from the other military services did not share information about their departments’ autonomy toplines during the briefing.

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The Air Force Research Laboratory’s innovation hub, AFWERX, recently awarded Washington, D.C.-headquartered startup Base Operations a Direct-to-Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract for the new tool, which will visualize physical security threats across the globe using public and proprietary source data and modeling assets.

“For the U.S. Air Force, we will develop enhanced capabilities using custom datasets for small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) incident tracking, foreign land ownership analysis near military installations, and port security around AMC coastal bases,” company CEO and founder Cory Siskind told DefenseScoop.

“This addresses the 350 sUAS detections reported across 100 military installations last year, including concerning incidents like the Chinese national apprehended at Vandenberg” Space Force Base in California, she noted.

As Siskind suggested, this deal unfolded at a time when unauthorized drone activity — including over military bases or other sensitive sites around America — has been trending upwards and presenting serious national security concerns. Yinpiao Zhou, a Chinese citizen and legal permanent resident, was arrested late last year and charged for flying a drone above Vandenberg and violating defense airspace regulations. 

In response to questions from DefenseScoop regarding this contract announcement and whether it was directly motivated by recent reports of unattributed drone incursions over U.S. military facilities, AFWERX spokesman Rob Bardua said “Open Topic contracts are awarded based on Defense Need, Technical Approach and Commercialization.”

The Air Force’s innovation arm “is focusing its investments to rapidly transition emerging commercial and dual-use technologies to remain the strongest and most lethal force in the world,” Bardua said.

Air Mobility Command will be the primary customer for Base Operations’ platform under this new contract award. That command is broadly responsible for providing airlift, air refueling, aeromedical evacuation, and global air mobility support to the joint force.  

“AMC’s specialized teams — Contingency Response Elements, Contingency Response Teams, and Airfield Assessment Teams — often operate in degraded environments where traditional intelligence is fragmented or unavailable. Our platform gives them a single pane of glass for data-driven threat intelligence,” Siskind noted.

The company is customizing the platform to pull datasets from multiple categories — such as waterborne threats near coastal bases, foreign land ownership and acquisitions near sensitive military installations, and small drone flight pattern tracking — with payload analysis and saturation mapping for high-incident areas. 

The technology will apply natural language processing to extract insights from more than 25,000 global data sources.

“The system processes data from 200+ million incidents worldwide, transforming raw intelligence into actionable security assessments in minutes rather than days,” Siskind said.

Base Operations’ platform will also help the command identify emerging risks, monitor threats across thousands of locations in a single dashboard and improve severity assessments, via the “BaseScore dynamic risk” index that will continuously update threat levels to reflect what’s happening in real-time.

According to Siskind, “current threat intelligence scores often rely on overly simplistic high/medium/low risk ratings determined by black box algorithms, raw crime numbers lacking context, or annual statistics that don’t reflect current reality.”

BaseScore “solves this with a precise 0-100 threat assessment scale that allows confident comparison of any location worldwide,” she said.

Before this SBIR award, Base Operations focused primarily on offering corporate security options to customers in the private sector.

“This Direct to Phase II award represents our first formal DOD engagement, but we’re exploring government use cases where we can add value quickly given our sole-source authority,” Siskind told DefenseScoop.

With this sole-source designation, defense organizations can purchase the Base Operations platform without competitive bidding — thus likely accelerating procurement and deployment.

“Our [contract award with AFWERX] moved very quickly — under three months — due to the urgency of the problem space, relevance to DOD objectives, and the streamlined Direct to Phase II SBIR contracting process,” Siskind said.

Sources did not disclose the value of this SBIR contract. 

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In a telephonic press briefing Thursday, Marine Corps Gen. Michael Langley, commander of U.S. Africa Command, shared recent developments on the security conditions in the Sahel and elsewhere. He also shed light on his team’s new approach to enable more African-led solutions that confront contemporary risks, at a time when the continent is seen as an “epicenter” for terrorism, and insurgencies continue to make strides against local forces.

“We are leaning into empowerment over dependency. The United States is actively supporting African militaries through targeted training, advanced intel-sharing and help building institutions that can endure over time,” he told reporters.

Africom continues to evolve since it became a fully operational combatant command in 2008. The organization is primarily responsible for overseeing and conducting U.S. military operations, exercises, and security cooperation in its area of responsibility, which covers 53 African states that encompass more than 800 ethnic groups.

Building on policy shifts at the end of the Biden administration — and in alignment with President Donald Trump’s second-term vision to reduce the U.S. military’s global footprint in favor of homeland defense and a focus on the Indo-Pacific — Africom in recent months has been pulling back its physical presence around certain African nations and pushing those partners to assume more responsibility for their security. 

Langley briefed reporters Thursday from Nairobi, Kenya, where he is participating in the annual African Chiefs of Defense Conference with representatives from 37 African countries. There, he’s been engaging in what he referred to as “powerful dialogue.”

“These conversations reaffirm something critical: African nations are not waiting to be saved. They’re stepping up to take control of their own futures,” he said.

One topic addressed during the conference sessions was African militaries’ intent to “match” technological capabilities to existing threats — and ultimately counter them across multiple domains.

“Most pressing was the information domain, and being able to operate at the speed of relevance and getting information out there to shape the operational environment, to shape the strategic environment. They see their ability to be able to do that for stability and security as important. And then also capabilities to protect the force, whether it be because of the asymmetric capabilities that violent extremist organizations can bring to bear, especially through [unmanned aerial systems] and drone technology. Our partners really want the leading edge-type technologies to protect the force,” Langley told DefenseScoop. “So, that forum gave the opportunity for a number of countries to talk about their initiatives going forward and how they can collaborate on sharing information and intelligence.”

While Africom pivots its approach to more directly assist its partners with becoming more self-sufficient, the commander noted, China is trying to “replicate every type of thing” the U.S. military is doing on the continent. Both China and Russia are also influencing African communities by offering short-term economic gains that could impact America’s national security interests in the years to come.

However, Langley said the command’s top strategic priority at this time involves countering threats to the U.S. homeland from terrorist factions — “the most dangerous of which are based in Africa.”

“Let me speak plainly about the threats we’re facing, especially in the Sahel region, including Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. It is the flashpoint of prolonged conflict and growing instability. It is the epicenter of terrorism on the globe. Terrorist networks affiliated with ISIS and Al Qaeda are thriving, particularly in Burkina Faso, where the government no longer controls vast parts of its own territory,” Langley explained.

Extremist groups are simultaneously gaining ground across the Lake Chad regions as attacks are resurging.

“Throughout my travels across West Africa and through dialogue here at the conference, the concerns shared by my peers match my own. One of the terrorists’ key goals now is access to the West Coast of Africa. If they gain access to the vast coastline, they can diversify their revenue streams and evolve their tactics more easily — exporting terrorism to American shores. These terrorists conduct illicit activity like smuggling, human trafficking and arms trading. All these activities that fund their nefarious actions and destabilize the region,” Langley said. 

“That’s why our coastal partners, like Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Benin, are relentlessly fighting along their northern borders to keep these threats at bay. Africom has and will continue to support them,” he added.

Since 2022, according to Langley, some terrorist factions have multiplied by up to fourfold around the continent.

In response to these threats and in line with its new strategic approach, Africom has been encouraging its international partners outside of Africa to increase burden-sharing. The command is also focused on helping its allies confront instability and other root causes of terrorism.

Further, early into his second administration, Trump made a policy change that empowered combatant commanders with expanded authorities that allow them to take faster action against “violent extremist organizations,” or VEOs.

“When [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth] gave me guidance on Africa, he really said his number one priority for me to execute was to be able to hit ISIS, who is inextricably linked to global capabilities, and has a high aspiration and capabilities through their networks to attack the homeland. That was the first priority for me — and yes, with those authorities we’ve been able to execute operations to be able to turn them, degrade them, or affect deterrence of their operations. So, that’s in the name of him telling us to match capabilities to the threat,” Langley told DefenseScoop.

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Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell and Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, director of operations at the Joint Staff, supplied new details about those airstrikes and the broader operational vision at the Defense Department’s first on-camera press briefing under the new Trump administration. 

“The initial wave of strikes hit over 30 targets at multiple locations, degrading a variety of Houthi capabilities. These included terrorist training sites, unmanned aerial vehicle infrastructure, weapons manufacturing capabilities and weapon storage facilities. It also included a number of command-and-control centers, including a terrorist compound where we know several senior unmanned aerial vehicle experts were located,” Grynkewich said.

“On Sunday, strike operations continued against additional headquarters locations, weapon storage facilities, as well as detection capabilities that have been used to threaten maritime shipping in the past,” he noted. 

Officials emphasized that this operation will continue into the coming days and until President Donald Trump’s demands are met. They didn’t explicitly clarify all of the commander-in-chief’s expectations, but Parnell suggested that they’d begin with a pledge from the Houthis to stop all attacks against American ships. 

“We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective. With that said, and this is a very important point, this is also not an endless offensive. This is not about regime change in the Middle East — this is about putting American interests first,” Parnell said. 

A series of Houthi-led UAV and missile attacks against military and commercial ships intensified in and around the Red Sea under the Biden administration, partially as a response to America’s support for Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

According to Parnell, the Houthis have launched one-way attack drones and missiles at U.S. warships more than 170 times, and at commercial vessels around 145 times, since 2023.

In response to reporters’ questions, the official did not specify what provoked this new wave of strikes. However, Grynkewich said that the U.S. is able to take action against a “much broader set of targets” due to support from Trump.    

“The other key differences are the delegation of authorities from the president through [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth] down to the operational commander. So, that allows us to achieve a tempo of operations where we can react to opportunities that we see on the battlefield in order to continue to put pressure on the Houthis,” Grynkewich noted.

The military is conducting battle damage assessments.

In terms of early estimates, Grynkewich suggested there were “dozens of military casualties so far” in this series of attacks — and despite the Houthis’ accusations, he said he’s seen no credible indications that any civilians were killed.

“There was an unmanned aerial vehicle facility that was struck with several key leaders. Those are key individuals who led their unmanned aerial vehicle enterprise and were some of the technical experts in there. So think of those types of individuals that we might be targeting as part of the command and control,” he said.

“We have destroyed command-and-control facilities, weapons manufacturing facilities and advanced weapons storage locations. But again, this campaign is ongoing. It’s difficult to talk about all this stuff from the [Pentagon briefing room] podium, and we’re not going to say anything from the podium until we’re sure that we have it right,” Parnell added.

The officials declined to share whether the U.S. is looking at plans to send ground troops to Yemen or the surrounding areas at this time, or to go after targets associated with Iran.

“I certainly don’t want to get out in front of the commander-in-chief and the secretary as it pertains to clearance of strikes and who we’ll be targeting. But I think the president’s made very clear that all options are on the table,” Parnell told reporters.

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However, the billionaire investor stopped short of revealing any immediate plans to disrupt the Pentagon’s ongoing Replicator initiative, which includes efforts to field thousands of uncrewed systems by August 2025.

“If confirmed, I will work with the appropriate stakeholders to review the value of initiatives like Replicator,” Feinberg wrote in response to advance policy questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee ahead of his confirmation hearing Tuesday.

That answer came after lawmakers’ inquiry into whether “a separate process like Replicator [is] needed within DOD to address the most pressing investment areas,” or if the existing acquisition and management mechanisms are sufficient to confront contemporary urgent needs.

Feinberg noted that, in his view, Replicator “tailors the rapid acquisition pathway to ensure rapid acquisition and deployment for items urgently needed to react to an enemy threat or respond to significant and urgent safety situations.” 

“I believe the department must utilize all of the authorities available to acquire capabilities to meet the most pressing and urgent needs, to include the capabilities being accelerated through Replicator,” he wrote.

First unveiled by former deputy Pentagon chief Kathleen Hicks in August 2023, Replicator 1.0 was then billed as a key military technology and procurement modernization campaign designed to counter China’s massive, ongoing military buildup by incentivizing U.S. industrial production capacity and the military’s adoption of drones en masse — through replicable processes — at a much faster pace. DOD was largely secretive about the initiative since its inception.

DefenseScoop reported that the first two tranches of selections — dubbed Replicator 1.1 and 1.2 — encompassed a variety of maritime and aerial drones, and associated counter-drone assets selected for mass manufacturing. In September 2024, defense leadership announced that, building on that success and momentum, Replicator 2.0 would accelerate the high-volume production of technologies designed to detect and destroy enemy drones.

Since Trump was elected in November and tapped Feinberg to serve as the Pentagon’s No. 2, many questions have swirled regarding the new administration’s vision for Replicator and whether plans are in the works to transform or terminate it. 

Feinberg’s responses to lawmakers’ questions suggest his intent to continue to prioritize efforts to deliver capabilities to support the military’s most critical operational problems, at scale.

“My understanding is that the Replicator initiative has focused on two critical areas: Replicator-1 is focused on delivering thousands of all-domain attritable autonomous systems to [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] to counter the pacing threat posed by the People’s Republic of China, and Replicator-2 is focusing on countering the threat posed by small unmanned aerial systems to our most critical installations and force concentrations. Both of these operational problems remain pressing challenges and, if confirmed, I will continue to ensure the department focuses on delivering innovative capabilities to warfighters in line with the secretary’s priorities of rebuilding our military and reestablishing deterrence,” he wrote.

The high-stakes initiative was not a major focus during Feinberg’s confirmation hearing. But in response to questions from Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., the nominee pledged to frequently brief and update Congress on the department’s plan for Replicator, and drones writ large.

“In regards to [threats from] swarming technology, Replicator’s a very important program,” Budd said.

At another point while testifying, Feinberg also emphasized that autonomous technologies and assets like those enabled by the pursuit will be vital to the U.S. military’s ability to deter foreign adversaries in the near term.

“Clearly, we need to develop autonomy — autonomy in significant numbers, with a centralized command, effectively ‘brain.’ And we have to make the right decision on whether we need to build a next-generation aircraft, or we can rely on autonomy. Of course, we’ve got to improve our shipbuilding. China is very strong there. Our nuclear capabilities are old, we have to upgrade them. And we have to develop hypersonics,” Feinberg told lawmakers.

A full Senate confirmation vote for Feinberg has not yet been scheduled.

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But questions continue to swirl as local law enforcement and an interagency coalition investigate the still-growing caseload of thousands of tips about various perplexing aircraft observed flying in multiple states since November.

Broadly, some of the elements that remain unclear include details about the drones’ technical features, the data they transmit, who is operating the vehicles and different agencies’ roles to respond in such incidents.  

“You’ve heard the White House, FBI, DHS, FAA and DOD say that we’re taking this matter very seriously, and significant federal, state and local resources are being devoted to looking into these reports and countering UAS activity,” Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Monday in an off-camera briefing.

Without citing hard evidence, Ryder doubled-down on statements he and other government officials previously made emphasizing that there’s no proof right now that the drones threaten U.S. national security or public safety, or that they have a “foreign nexus.” 

He told DefenseScoop that “to [his] knowledge,” currently, the systems are not considered to be U.S. military drones or associated defense contractor assets running in real-world operations. 

“It’s also important to remember that domestically we in the DOD, understandably, are limited on the kinds of capabilities that we can use when it comes to drone detection, and tracing them. So the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that we can employ outside the homeland aren’t capabilities that we can necessarily deploy inside the homeland. In other words, we don’t conduct intelligence on U.S. citizens,” Ryder said. 

However, he added that there are certain “passive and active” measures the U.S. military can pursue as necessary — specifically in terms of detection and defending its facilities — if it is ultimately determined that any unidentified drones could harm personnel at bases on the ground or national security writ large.

“I won’t go into details, for operational security reasons. But that could include things like affecting the signal. It could include using our own drones to take down drones or, essentially, redirecting them — and things like that,” Ryder told DefenseScoop.

The press secretary did not definitively clarify the military commands and other DOD components involved in such monitoring, detection or response operations, or what their responsibilities could each entail.

Testifying to Congress in November, the new chief of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), Jon Kosloski, told lawmakers that when incursions by seemingly unexplainable technology occur, his team supports other federal agencies and the intelligence community “through an advisory capacity.”

“As AARO is trying to push the bounds on detectability for UAP, we are hopefully going to have best practices that we can also provide to the counter-UAS [mission], and potentially we might have additional technologies that we can offer them to support,” Kosloski said.

In conversations on Friday and Monday, a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that AARO officials are positioned to assist in the local and interagency investigations as needed.

“So far, AARO has received no reports of UAP in conjunction with the recent drone flights or incursions in New Jersey and other eastern states. AARO is following the reports of drones or other aerial objects over New Jersey and other states closely and is prepared to support law enforcement agencies if requested,” the spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

Around the same time as the media briefing at the Pentagon on Monday, President-elect Donald Trump speaking in Florida suggested without providing evidence that “the government knows what is happening” with the drones reported over New Jersey, but it’s withholding the information from the public.

“I will tell you we are also committed to providing as much information as possible — as quickly as possible — on this issue,” Ryder told reporters at the Pentagon.

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But so far, there’s been no associated operational or safety impacts to troops on the ground there, defense officials told reporters Tuesday.

“The U.S. military are guests in England … at the indication of the government of the United Kingdom. So, certainly we’re working very closely with the authorities there. We are taking it seriously. We’re monitoring and taking appropriate measures,” Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a briefing Tuesday afternoon.

Beyond that, he and other American and British defense officials who spoke to DefenseScoop about the incursions this week declined to share explicit details about the type of drones or their features — or the tactics and procedures the U.S. and U.K. forces could apply to counter them.

The first reports of these still-unexplained unmanned aerial system capabilities surfaced about a week ago in notable locations where the two militaries and some of their closest allies are jointly operating. Among other U.S. assets deployed across these bases, Lakenheath is headquarters for the Air Force’s 48th Fighter Wing, deemed the “foundation of USAFE’s combat capability.”

“The number of systems has fluctuated, and they have ranged in sizes and configurations. Our units continue to monitor the airspace and are working with host-nation authorities and mission partners to ensure the safety of base personnel, facilities and assets,” a spokesperson for Air Forces in Europe and Africa told DefenseScoop in an email Tuesday.

They added that, to date, installation leaders have determined that none of the incursions have harmed residents, facilities or assets on any of the bases.

In response to questions at the Pentagon press briefing, Ryder told DefenseScoop: “Right now, the assessment is that these drones have had no operational impact or safety impact on our personnel at any of these facilities — and we’re keeping a close eye on them.”  

The press secretary would not comment on whether these UAS appeared to be the same as or similar to those that were detected over Langley Air Force Base in October. 

Regarding defense mechanisms to pinpoint and take down the drones, Ryder said the U.S. and U.K. militaries have a variety of methods at their disposal — and that they are committed to protecting personnel and facilities.

Spotlighting the emerging and historic nature of this threat, Ryder noted that the Defense Department and Federal Aviation Administration are beginning to cooperatively explore — “in this modern era of small aircraft” — the best approach to ensure they are responsibly protecting all assets, without assuming every new aircraft is a threat.

“I have a very close relative of mine who’s a drone pilot, and he flies his drone all over and does amateur photography,” he said.

“Just to kind of put this into context, even here in the United States, if there are drones that are being flown by hobbyists or some other entity, you want to make sure that you’re doing due diligence — not only to protect yourself and the safety of others — but also using appropriate measures in order to not inadvertently create second-order effects, or in other words, potentially harming the civilian communities in which we operate in and around,” Ryder told DefenseScoop. 

Spokespersons from the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence on Tuesday did not confirm whether they have determined the source of the latest drones reported or how the military forces are planning to counter any future incursions.

“We take threats seriously and maintain robust measures at defence sites. We are supporting the U.S. Air Force response,” an MOD spokesperson told DefenseScoop in an email.

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That large-scale modernization affair — Autonomous Warrior 2024 — marks AUKUS’ signature event this year and is part of the alliance’s new Maritime Big Play series of integrated trilateral experiments and exercises, two senior defense officials told a small group of reporters on a call Wednesday.

“Maritime Big Play allows AUKUS partners to practice fielding and maintaining thousands of uncrewed systems, gaining valuable experience operating in coalitions to solve realistic operational problems, such as improving undersea situational awareness,” said Madeline Mortelmans, acting assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities. 

The AUKUS alliance is structured around two pillars. 

While the first of those encompasses the co-development of a nuclear-powered submarine force for Australia, Pillar 2 focuses on the co-creation and deployments of emerging and disruptive military technologies.

Via Pillar 2, Mortelmans noted, AUKUS members are “implementing a fundamental shift to more closely integrate our systems and break down barriers to collaboration at every stage and in every part of our system.”

Broadly, the MBP series is designed to push forward the Pillar 2 objective to rapidly translate cutting-edge capabilities into practical, asymmetric assets delivered quickly to service members in the field. 

Through it, the international partners aim to collaboratively test and refine the alliance’s capacity to jointly operate uncrewed systems at sea, transmit and process intelligence and reconnaissance data from all three nations, and supply real-time maritime domain awareness to strengthen decision-making. 

“What we’ve been doing with this experimentation campaign is to ensure that when different gear shows up in the fight and into theater, it can be included seamlessly to provide common operating pictures and common control systems, and to ensure effects as and when we choose to have them as a coalition,” a senior defense official who joined Mortelmans but spoke on the condition of anonymity, told reporters on Wednesday. 

DefenseScoop asked the two officials whether any of the autonomous or other combat capabilities were identified by AUKUS participants as a tool that would make sense for more rapid fielding and use in military operations in the near term.

“Some of them already are,” the senior defense official said. “There are some systems — uncrewed surface vessels in Australia  — that have been put out on the ocean. And some of the things that we saw during this experimentation campaign was data coming back from those systems in real-time to maintain a common operating picture.”

They further told DefenseScoop: “Part of doing the Maritime Big Play is to see the realm of what’s available and to make those kinds of decisions. But at this point, we haven’t even completed the exercise, so no decisions have been taken to acquire or rapidly accelerate any system.” 

On the call, the two senior defense officials opted not to explicitly name any of the technology brands or companies that made the sensors, platforms, drones, or network and communications systems the U.S. brought to Autonomous Warrior 2024.

However, in an email from Australia shortly afterwards, Pentagon spokesperson Army Maj. Pete Nguyen shed more light on the exact prototypes and technologies America demonstrated during the event.

The list he provided includes, among others:

• High Altitude Balloons (HABs) that “augment the space domain by providing resilient communications in a denied environment from the stratosphere by carrying a range of mission capable payloads” — from Aerostar, based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
• Greenough Advanced Rescue Craft (GARC), which are “low-cost attritable [small uncrewed  surface vehicles or sUSVs] that can deploy independently or as a formation … and provide an uncrewed means to respond to Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD)” — from MAPC, in Baltimore, Maryland.
• Sea Stalker sUSV that’s “designed to serve in multiple maritime missions to include reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence collection” — from Swift Ships, a small business based in Morgan City, Louisiana.
• Triton “multi-model Autonomous Underwater and Surface Vessel capable of persistent operation in a contested environment with threat detection and evasion capabilities” — from Ocean Aero, a small business in Gulfport, Mississippi.
• A “Government-Owned, Non-Proprietary Common Control System” that gives “U.S. Navy uncrewed vehicles hardware and software that works across several different systems” and helps process data from sensor payloads.

“This is only the first in our series of experiments and demonstrations. Over time, Maritime Big Play will grow and evolve to reflect emerging technologies, new systems and new operational requirements,” Mortelmans told reporters Wednesday.

Notably, during that call she also mentioned that members of the Japanese military joined this round of Maritime Big Play experimentation as “observers.”

AUKUS leaders have made it clear that they are open to expanding the trilateral security partnership to include other nations — solely under Pillar 2, not Pillar 1 — to jointly strengthen the interoperability of their maritime drone systems. 

“Planning for the next exercise is underway. So the full details of what [Japan’s] participation will be in the future hasn’t yet been determined, but I think that they will move from being an observer to being a participant in the activity. And what a participant means could be bringing Japanese systems and platforms participating in that command-and-control architecture. There’s a wide range of opportunities and we’re really eager to explore those,” the senior defense official told DefenseScoop.

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Sources who spoke to DefenseScoop on the condition of anonymity this week confirmed that the uncrewed system was put forward for Replicator 1.2 by the Army’s Medium Range Reconnaissance (MRR) program — and ultimately made the cut.

Replicator was largely conceptualized by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and her team, who first unveiled the initiative in August 2023.

Citing security concerns, Pentagon officials have been secretive about certain aspects of the pursuit as it all comes together. But broadly, it encompasses a multifaceted effort to deter China by incentivizing and expediting industrial production capacity and the military’s adoption of next-generation warfighting technologies en masse — through replicable processes.

Tranches within the first capability focus area — known as Replicator 1.0 — are pushing weapons and assets associated with what Hicks refers to as “all-domain attritable autonomous systems” (ADA2) to counter China’s anti-access/area-denial strategy, by August 2025. 

Replicator 2.0, reported first by DefenseScoop last month, will accelerate high-volume production of technologies designed to find and destroy enemy drones.

Although not everything is out in the open at this point, DefenseScoop has confirmed that the first two tranches of selections — Replicator 1.1 and 1.2 — include a mix of maritime and aerial drones and counter-drone capabilities that are being prioritized for accelerated production.

According to Anduril’s website, Ghost-X is an extended-range uncrewed aerial system that’s “designed to evolve after fielding, aligning to lessons learned from the hardware and software iteration required in contested environments like Ukraine and [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command].”

A company specification sheet states that Ghost-X deploys in minutes from a slim rifle case or tactical soft case during dismounted operations, and can be launched and recovered in confined landing zones. The drones have 80 to 90 minutes of cruise endurance, up to 15 miles operating range, capacity to carry payloads that are 25 pounds or less, and are weatherized for a range of harsh and austere environments. 

They are part of Anduril’s Ghost family of systems that its CEO Palmer Luckey said he originally created to counter China’s increasing pervasiveness across the global drone industry.

Via a press release last month, Anduril announced that Ghost-X was tapped for the Army’s Company Level Small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS) Directed Requirement, which is meant to rapidly field “commercial capability to Brigade Combat Teams to inform requirements, doctrine, tactics, training, and maintenance concepts for the Army’s Medium Range Reconnaissance (MRR) program.”

The company thanked the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit — one of the key organizations driving the execution of Replicator — in that release.  

In response to questions from DefenseScoop, Hicks’ public affairs advisor Eric Pahon said on Thursday: “We have no announcements to make at this time regarding Replicator 1.2 capability selections.” 

An Anduril spokesperson declined to comment or share details on Ghost-X pricing.

For fiscal 2024, Pentagon officials have secured about $500 million from Congress to fund early Replicator batches. Department leaders requested an additional $500 million to enable the project for fiscal 2025.

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This development marks the first public report of the second capability focus area under the Replicator initiative — a high-profile effort that underpins the Defense Department’s multifaceted plan to deter China.

According to a memorandum signed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sept. 27 and viewed by DefenseScoop ahead of publication Monday, the Pentagon “will tackle the warfighter priority of countering the threat posed by small uncrewed aerial systems (C-sUAS) to our most critical installations and force concentrations” under Replicator 2.0.

“The expectation is that Replicator 2 will assist with overcoming challenges we face in the areas of production capacity, technology innovation, authorities, policies, open system architecture and system integration, and force structure,” Austin wrote in the memo.

Austin has directed Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady to oversee the development of a Replicator 2.0 plan that will be proposed to Congress in the Pentagon’s budget request for fiscal 2026, according to the memo. 

The Defense Department aims to field the C-sUAS systems selected through Replicator 2.0 within two years after lawmakers approve their funding, the secretary wrote.

A defense official declined to provide details regarding what systems, specific capabilities or quantities will be included in the Replicator 2.0 plan. However, the official noted the Pentagon will focus on fielding C-sUAS systems at locations both within and outside the continental United States.

The department sees opportunities to work with state governments, local communities and interagency partners to “burn down risk regarding domestic authorities needed for safe and secure base protection,” the official told DefenseScoop. As for overseas locations, the Pentagon will work with allies and partners to ensure the protection of military bases and surrounding communities, they added.

Hicks first launched Replicator as a key military technology and procurement modernization effort in August 2023. 

At the time, she billed it as a strategic initiative to confront China’s massive, ongoing military buildup by incentivizing U.S. industrial production capacity and the Defense Department’s adoption of advanced warfare technologies en masse — through replicable processes — at a much faster pace than has been achieved before.

Tranches within the first capability focus area — Replicator 1.0 — broadly encompass the purchase and making of loitering munitions, and other technologies associated with what Hicks refers to as “all-domain attritable autonomous systems” (ADA2) to counter China’s anti-access/area-denial A2AD strategy by August 2025.

DefenseScoop has reported that the first two tranches of selections — dubbed Replicator 1.1 and 1.2 — include a variety of maritime and aerial drones and associated counter-drone assets selected for mass production.

Austin noted in the new memo that the Defense Department is “on track with the Initiative’s fielding plan for next summer,” adding that Replicator has “helped ignite our efforts to scale autonomous systems across the force more generally.”

Pentagon officials have secured roughly $500 million from Congress for fiscal 2024 to fund the first Replicator technology batches. The department has requested an additional $500 million for fiscal 2025.

Since Replicator’s inception, Hicks and other defense leaders have been expressly secretive about their full vision, select capabilities and concepts of operation that are foundational to realizing this effort, often citing security concerns.

Lawmakers, however, have also steadily questioned whether the department has allowed Congress and oversight bodies enough access to adequate information about the implementation of this initiative.  

The defense official emphasized that Austin’s memo for Replicator 2.0 serves as an endorsement of the broader initiative, as well as a reflection of his commitment to delivering counter-unmanned aerial vehicle systems for warfighters. 

“In marrying that commitment to the Replicator oversight and delivery model, the department will be well positioned to accelerate progress in this critical area,” the official said.

The forthcoming activities are envisioned to complement and advance “the significant C-sUAS work already underway in the Defense Department in delivering modular and mutually reinforcing solutions to sensing, AI-enabled decision support, and defeat capabilities appropriate to the range of environments in which those most critical installations and force concentrations operate,” the official added.

Doug Beck, director of the Defense Innovation Unit, will take the helm on Replicator 2.0 efforts in collaboration with Pentagon Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante, who also serves as the department’s C-sUAS principal staff assistant, according to the memo.

Austin wrote that work under Replicator 2.0 will leverage efforts by the Counter Uncrewed Systems Warfighter (C-UXS) Senior Integration Group, which was established in March to identify capability gaps and potential technology solutions for countering threats posed by UAS.

The defense official told DefenseScoop that this team has since “been the body responsible for executing ‘fight tonight’ solutions to combat this threat.”

“Lessons learned from the C-UXS Senior Integration Group’s work regarding the ongoing threat posed by unmanned systems will help inform solutions for the Replicator 2 effort,” the official explained.

The defense official further pointed to real-world evolving conflicts in multiple regions abroad that they said “demonstrate the warfighter need for increased focus on” drone-disrupting technologies.

“The secretary has made clear that countering uncrewed assets is one of his top priorities. As a result of the Ukraine war and engagements in the Middle East, the department has learned a lot about the dynamic pace of the threat and the accelerated pace of emerging sUAS technology — all of which informed leadership’s thinking on where to focus Replicator 2,” they told DefenseScoop.

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