Source: Global Times

[Global Times Special Correspondent Wu Yan] In recent years, the Pentagon has attempted to use cheap unmanned equipment driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to deal with the "quantitative advantage" of the People's Liberation Army, and even advocated a "hell landscape" in the Taiwan Strait. But to the dismay of the US military, these plans have suffered setbacks one after another. The Wall Street Journal of the United States concluded on the 26th that the Pentagon's bureaucracy, the insufficient technical accumulation of cheap unmanned equipment by the U.S. defense industry, and the U.S. military's poor consideration of the future combat environment have led to setbacks in related plans.

U.S. Navy patrol global autonomous reconnaissance boat in ports

The unsuccessful ¡°copy¡± plan

The Pentagon launched the ¡°replicator¡± program two years ago to quickly purchase low-cost AI weapons ¡°to counter China¡¯s growing military capabilities.¡± The then US Deputy Defense Secretary Catherine Hicks announced in 2023 that it would deliver ¡°thousands¡± of AI-driven weapons systems in the air, on land and at sea by August 2025.The ¡°replicator¡± plan could not only leverage technological innovation against China¡¯s ¡°scale advantage¡± in military personnel and equipment, but could also stimulate U.S. military low-cost unmanned weapons to meet Pentagon¡¯s most pressing fighting needs.

According to Bloomberg, one of the most realistic and urgent uses of the "replicant" plan lies in the "potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait".The US Indian Pacific Command commander Samuel Paparo has repeatedly declared, relying on the "replicant" program, "when the future Taiwan Sea conflict, the U.S. Army will deploy thousands of drones and unmanned boats in the Taiwan Strait to delay and consume the Liberation Army's seizure troops, to fight for comprehensive counterattack time for the U.S. Army and its allies."U.S. Navy News" website described that when the U.S. Army will be deployed in the air MQ-4C type wide sea surveillance drones and "spring-600" suicide drones,

Although Hicks boasted when he left the Pentagon in late January this year that the Replicator program was "on the path to success and initiated the process of procuring related systems for the military," people familiar with the matter revealed that the unmanned combat systems involved in the program were either unreliable, too expensive to manufacture or slow to manufacture to procure the required quantities.

Three of the dozens of autonomous systems purchased for the Copywriter project were not completed at the time of selection, or were only in the conceptual phase. For example, one mistake was the purchase of hundreds of U.S. Black Sea Technologies' "global autonomous reconnaissance boats". The drone was not designed for complex remote missions in the Pacific, and U.S. Navy officers were still compelled to push the procurement without fully understanding its technical limitations. Increasingly, the U.S. military repeatedly replaced the software system and increased functional complexity, resulting in rising costs and unnecessary delays.

One of the largest procurement projects of the ¡°Replica¡± project was the Sprint Knight-600 drone. Analysis by the U.S. Army Intelligence Center showed that in a communication-disturbed environment, the ¡°Print Knight¡± series drones were vulnerable to attack. The manufacturer of the drone, American Aviation Environment, explained that based on years of real-war experience in Ukraine, the company has made significant improvements to the drone, which significantly improved its performance in an electronic warfare environment. But informed people revealed that the U.S. Army refused to purchase this improved model due to concerns about the project¡¯s delay.

Replacing the new sector is still difficult to solve.

The Wall Street Journal stated that due to concerns that the "Replicator" program is progressing too slowly, relevant work has been handed over to the National Defense Autonomous Operations Group, a new department under the U.S. Special Operations Command. Its primary goal is to speed up the progress of the project and concentrate on research and development. "The most applicable weapon".

Concept diagram of "Switchblade" drone attacking ground targets

According to the report, the "Copier" program was led by General Frank Donovan, Deputy Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command. In August this year, when Donovan took over the project, he attended an event in California. The event should have demonstrated the advanced technology already acquired by the "Copier" program, but the results exposed the systems not yet with the ability to deploy in real war.

The report quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that during this demonstration, the unmanned boat manufactured by Black Sea Technology Company had a rudder failure and drifted out of control; The launch of an Anduril drone was delayed due to a malfunction; In addition, the software carried by multiple unmanned boats failed to identify targets as expected, or targets were misjudged.

The U.S. Navy conducted a small U.S. drone test on the coast of California in June, with one drone accelerating suddenly during the test, leading to the sinking of a trailer involved in the test. In another test conducted by the U.S. Navy in July, a U.S. drone accidentally extinguished. While U.S. technicians were busy dealing with it, another drone struck the right edge of other ships and crashed into the water after crossing the deck. The incident involved two U.S. drones developed by Salonic Technologies and Black Sea Technologies. According to sources, both accidents were software failures or human error caused, including communication disruptions between the aircraft¡¯s system and external software.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. military wants to invest a large amount of unmanned equipment in the Taiwan Sea conflict, facing multiple technological and logistical challenges, and unmanned ships and aircraft need to independently traverse the vast Pacific and cope with different battlefield environments, it is likely to face the radio and GPS signal interference scenario.U.S. drones manufactured by different companies need to coordinate positioning potential targets in order to carry out the strike mission, but the lack of a unified overall standard resulted in the "replicant" program was unable to simultaneously control a large number of unmanned software.

Opposition voices continue

In fact, there are also voices within the US military that oppose the "Replicator" plan. At the beginning of the plan, American military expert Bill Greenwalt criticized that the US military was simply unable to purchase enough equipment according to this timetable. This is partly due to the Pentagon's miscalculation of the scale required for future unmanned operations. The "thousands" of unmanned equipment involved in the "Replicator" program are far from enough to cope with expendable use in large-scale conflicts. The US "Business Insider" website stated that during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, both sides invested thousands of cheap drones of various types every day. The so-called "cheap unmanned equipment" in the "Replicator" plan still takes the "high-end route". The cost of the "Switchblade" drone is an order of magnitude higher than that of the cheap drones in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The price of "Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Boat" is also far higher than that of the Ukrainian suicide unmanned boat. At the beginning, Hicks asked for an allocation of $1 billion within two years, but many U.S. lawmakers thought that this amount was far from enough. "To ensure the success of this plan, billions of dollars need to be allocated".

Pentagon miscalculated the scale needed for future unmanned operationsData map

On the other hand, critics of the ¡°replicator¡± program believe that U.S. defense companies lack sufficient production capacity, many core components need to be purchased from overseas. Reuters said that the Black Sea technology company can produce dozens of unmanned boats per month, far from meeting the needs of the U.S. Navy. The Wall Street Journal previously that the largest U.S. drone manufacturer Skydio was sanctioned by the mainland for participating in the sale of arms to Taiwan, resulting in the company¡¯s unmanned aircraft used in the mainland batteries can not supply, even the Pentagon¡¯s order could not be satisfied.

In addition, critics also argue that the U.S. military believes that cheap, consumable drones can cope with China's quantitative advantage in traditional equipment and personnel, but China's gap with the U.S. in the field of unmanned equipment is smaller, and large-scale manufacturing capacity is stronger, the U.S. military's move is a "big bet".