November 20, 2024 – Today the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) announced contract awards to select software developers supporting the Replicator initiative. These vendors are playing a key role in advancing resilient command and control (C2) and collaborative autonomy solutions for all domain attritable autonomous (ADA2) systems.
“We believe that best in breed commercial software solutions can significantly enhance DoD modernization efforts,” said Doug Beck, director of DIU. “Many leading AI and autonomy firms are outside of our traditional defense industrial base, and DIU is working actively with partners across the Department to bring the very best capabilities from the U.S. tech sector to bear in support of our most critical warfighter needs. This latest step in the Replicator initiative is a critical example of that teamwork in action.”
The software awards are linked to two Commercial Solutions Openings (CSO) that DIU posted in July 2024, in close collaboration with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), the Military Services, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO), and other components across the Department. In a continuation of the accelerated pace of the Replicator initiative, DIU led this team to move from solicitation to award in just five months.
Opportunistic, Resilient & Innovative Expeditionary Network Topology, or ORIENT, requested solutions for improving the resilience of C2 for ADA2 systems. In response, 119 companies submitted 130 solution proposals. DIU awarded prototype contracts to Viasat, Aalyria, Higher Ground, and IoT/AI to deliver ORIENT capabilities.
Autonomous Collaborative Teaming, or ACT, requested solutions for the automated coordination of swarms of hundreds or thousands of uncrewed assets across multiple domains in order to improve their lethality and efficiency. 132 companies submitted 165 solutions to this project. DIU made prototype awards to Swarm Aero, Anduril Industries, and L3Harris Technologies.
Since Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen Hicks’ announcement of the Replicator initiative 15 months ago, the Department-wide effort has accelerated the acquisition of thousands of ADA2 systems. While these systems are valuable as single agents or swarms of like systems, they are most resilient and effective when they operate in combined teams that can collaborate with other types of systems across domains.
Resilient C2 and collaborative autonomy vendors will enhance the effectiveness of these systems by providing user interfaces, collaborative autonomy architectures and software, and network orchestration. The enabling software technology will also allow Replicator systems to seamlessly connect robust long-haul communications solutions to redundant local mesh networks and ensure they can continue to operate as a system-of-systems in disconnected, disrupted, low-bandwidth, and intermittent environments. Together, these solutions will enable so-called “heterogeneous collaboration” between different Replicator systems fielded in the next year and lay the foundation for the Department’s broader push towards collaborative autonomy.
As the only Department of Defense (DoD) organization focused exclusively on fielding and scaling commercial technology across the U.S. military at commercial speeds, DIU acts as the front door for non-traditional companies and talent to work with the government. DIU awarded both competitive CSOs after careful evaluation in collaboration with stakeholders throughout the DoD.
“This is a concrete example of the collaboration between DIU and CDAO that leverages enterprise policy, software architecture, and experimentation to accelerate and deliver critical capabilities to warfighters,” said Chief Digital and AI Officer Dr. Radha Plumb, whose organization plays a key role in Replicator’s software integrated enablers. “This demonstrates how the Department can leverage commercial solutions and rapidly prototype, field and scale capabilities to address the operational needs of the Joint Force.”
While Replicator’s priority is rapidly delivering capabilities for forces in U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the solutions it will deliver are intended to scale across the entire Joint Force in the future.
“Replicator is cutting across silos and accelerating the pace of development for autonomous systems,” according to Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Navy Adm. Christopher Grady. “This effort is serving as a pathfinder, and we are learning lessons about processes and technology that will apply to future problems. This will allow us to continue to expand the use of uncrewed systems.”