Senate appropriators say they want to slow the growth of the Pentagon's Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve in favor of the Replicator program which aims to field thousands of attritable, autonomous drones by August 2025 to counter China. The Senate Appropriations Committee, in a report accompanying its fiscal year 2025 defense spending bill , said RDER, for which the Defense Department has requested $450 million, “has to date not resulted in accelerated fielding outcomes.” Appropriators pointed to the fact that “less...
