“Small, smart, cheap, and many” is the way Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks describes the characteristics of the drones that the Pentagon intends to put in the hands of warfighters in 18-24 months as part its Replicator drone initiative.
“Imagine flocks of ADA2 (all-domain, attritable autonomous) systems, flying at all sorts of altitudes, doing a range of missions, building on what we’ve seen in Ukraine,” Hicks said. The experience of the Ukraine conflict has been instructive, said Hicks. “We’ve seen in Ukraine what low-cost, attritable systems can do.”
“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62
Access all of The Cipher Brief‘s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+Member.
