Pentagon plans drone ‘hellscape’ to defend Taiwan

The report adds that the US defense industry “may not currently have the capacity to produce drones in the quantities needed for a war with China.”

Like Russia, China’s authoritarian regime has enabled the country’s defense industrial base to rapidly accelerate weapons research, development, and production, with Beijing thus far “investing heavily in munitions and acquiring advanced weapons systems and equipment at a rate five to six times faster than the United States,” according to a comparison published by CSIS in March. In contrast, the U.S. defense industrial ecosystem has consolidated over the past few decades around a handful of large “flagship” contractors, such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, a development that threatens to not only stifle innovation but also impede production of the critical systems needed for the next major war.

“Overall, the U.S. defense industrial ecosystem lacks the capacity, responsiveness, flexibility, and augmentation to meet the production and warfighting needs of the U.S. military,” the CSIS report states. “Unless urgent changes are made, the United States risks weakening its deterrent and compromising its warfighting capabilities.”

To that end, the latest CNAS report recommends that the Defense Department and Congress work to foster both the commercial and military drone industrial base to “scale up production and create surge capacity” to quickly replace drones lost in a future conflict. While the Defense Department has relied on large, multi-year procurement programs to source munitions from large “primes” and “provide industry with the stability it needs to scale up production capacity” when it comes to Ukraine, as the 2023 CNAS report puts it, the Replicator Initiative is explicitly aimed at not only providing drone makers with more of that stability but also drawing in “non-traditional” defense industry players, namely startups like Anduril and drone boat maker Saronic, the latter of which recently received $175 million in Series B funding to expand its manufacturing capabilities.

According to the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon’s agency responsible for leveraging emerging commercial technologies, Replicator “will provide the commercial sector with demand signals that enable companies to invest in building capabilities and strengthen both the supply chain and industrial base. Investments in Replicator will encourage traditional and non-traditional industry players to deliver a record number of all-domain attributable autonomous systems, consistent with the ambitious timeline established by the Deputy Secretary of Defense.”

“It all comes down to contracts,” Pettyjohn said. “Replicators make the most sense when the Defense Department buys something, stores it for a few years, and then buys something new for a different mission set, so that the Defense Department isn’t sitting on systems in inventory for decades. Establishing these practices, contracting them, and putting enough funding into them to create competition and resiliency within the industry is really necessary to drive innovation and deliver the capabilities we need.”

It is unclear whether the US will actually be ready to defend Taiwan when the time comes. As legendary Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke famously said, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” But with the right preparation, funding, and training (and a bit of luck), the Pentagon and its Taiwanese partners could send a flood of lethal drones into the region to thwart suspected Chinese invasion plans. War is hell, but when the next big conflict in the Indo-Pacific comes, the US wants to ensure it will be absolute hell — at least for the Chinese military.