As I noted, from small drones to highly capable warships, the PRC is building at a pace that is not only leaving the United States behind but is putting us at such a severe disadvantage that it requires immediate national attention and a whole-of-government effort to address.    

As multiple unclassified war games have demonstrated, our ability today to field the volume of platforms and weapons required to compete in the South China Sea is not there. And the industrial base to support the rapid arming and rearming is not there. As an early draft of the National Defense Industrial Strategy noted, the U.S. defense industrial base “does not possess the capacity, capability, responsiveness, or resilience required to satisfy the full range of military production needs at speed and scale.” 

This is true for drones as it is for long range precision munitions and ship building, and on and on throughout our defense industry. 

And let’s be clear, this is not just a strategic deterrence challenge, or a theoretical problem for a future conflict. The war of attrition in Ukraine is shining a spotlight on the deficiencies of our own industrial base, as well as the shortfalls of European and Ukrainian organic production capabilities.  

We are not likely to face a future where warfare is limited to a single part of the world – already today we are trying to arm allies in 3 AORs – Israel in CENTOM, Ukraine in EUCOM, and Taiwan in INDOPACOM – while maintain our own readiness and warfighting capacity, including keeping our warships armed to defend freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and our bases in the Levant armed to counter incoming missile and one-way UAV attacks.  
Furthermore, the lethality of all-domain drone technology, as well as the tactics for their deployment, has accelerated at a stunning pace. In September we talked a lot about the use of commercial-off-the-shelf drones in Ukraine and the outsized role they are playing in strike and ISR missions. But since we last came together, warfare has evolved dramatically once again: 

My point is that the pace of the threat is evolving rapidly, and our ability to respond to multiple challenges simultaneously is stretching us thin.  

We must learn from what is happening globally and adapt accordingly. Now.  

The U.S. should look to Ukraine and their extraordinary moves to rapidly build up their autonomy industry as a model to learn from. Already, more than 20,000 pilots have been trained and more than 20 schools established to train more pilots, manufacturers, and maintenance workers in all-domain drone warfare. More than 300,000 domestically produced aerial drones were manufactured in Ukraine last year alone, with an aggressive approach to onshore component production to break their reliance on the PRC for electronic components. Ukraine recently established the Unmanned Systems Force, and they have set an ambitious goal of manufacturing more than 1 million first-person video (FPV) drones in 2024. And Ukrainian’s incredible agility and ingenuity extends beyond UAS to autonomy in ground, surface, and subsurface as well – those Group 13 USV attacks in the Black Sea are keeping the Russian fleet in port in Crimea, where even there they are not safe as we saw from the swarm attacks of the last few months. Emulating Ukraine’s proactive and agile approach could position the U.S. to stay at the forefront of military innovation in 2024 and beyond.  

So that takes us back to Replicator. Replicator is an initiative, or an idea – not a program – to help us learn how to achieve integration goals, and to focus attention on key advanced technologies, starting first with autonomous technology. We believe in Replicator. Even more so, we believe in the goals of Replicator.   

Because let’s be clear, when we are successful, we’ll be providing our warfighters with tools that are: 

Those are the unique capabilities that AUVSI members can provide. The future of warfare is upon us, and AUVSI and our members are working every day to ensure the U.S. is the global leader in uncrewed systems technology and autonomy.

How is AUVSI seeking to accomplish this goal? – by aligning our work through our strategic plan’s goals of advocacy, education, and connecting the industry.  

In December, we hosted a workshop at the SECRET-level at Third Fleet Headquarters in San Diego for our members and numerous DoD stakeholders – including INDOPACOM, SOCOM, NORTHCOM, DIU, CDAO, AFWERX, and many others – to discuss capability gaps and how industry can help. Serious dialogue and problem solving occurred. Our members, and our DoD hosts, walked away with tangible outcomes. We are confident that AUVSI is the right stakeholder, given our membership and our networks, to continue to foster this collaboration between industry and the DoD. 

In two months, from April 22-25, back in San Diego for our annual trade show, XPONENTIAL, we will continue this conversation with another version of AUVSI Defense. Further, more than a dozen of our members will be demonstrating capabilities live -- right outside the convention center in the ocean and in the air for key INDOPACOM, DIU, and other armed services stakeholders.