DIU Selects Viasat To Support Replicator Initiative
The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has chosen Carlsbad, California-based Viasat to provide command and control connectivity across unmanned systems in support of the DIU’s Replicator effort, according to Viasat’s December 18 press release.
The Replicator initiative aims to deliver uncrewed, all-domain attritable autonomous vehicle and software capabilities for warfighter operations, according to the DIU. Through the Replicator program, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is strengthening its collaboration with the commercial autonomy sector and accelerating the delivery of new autonomous technologies to the warfighter.
The DIU announced in November that among other companies, Viasat was awarded a contract to deliver opportunistic, resilient and innovative expeditionary network topology capabilities in support of the Replicator initiative.
Through this contract, the company will develop a multidomain uncrewed secure integrated communications (MUSIC) architecture as the network component needed to enable connectivity between autonomous systems using multitransport pathways.
The MUSIC software-defined network will be an optimized configuration of the satellite company's NetAgility pltaform, which is designed to respond to uncrewed swarm communications operational needs. MUSIC will also enable secure information sharing command and control across autonomous systems.
“The coordinated use of autonomous systems offers critical operational advantages as the demands to quickly collect and share mission data grow, including executing those missions safely without putting warfighters in harm’s way,” said David Schmolke, vice president of Viasat Mission Connections and Cybersecurity, via the release. “MUSIC and NetAgility network orchestration is an optimal fit for addressing the network and advanced [command and control] requirements to enable resilient, multipath communications through contested and denied environments.”
During the Autonomous Warrior 24 exercise in October in Australia, the company worked with the DoD Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering’s prototyping and experimentation team to demonstrate the MUSIC solution’s ability to connect autonomous maritime systems.
According to Viasat, MUSIC helped the United States, Australia and United Kingdom coalition network to share position location information, situational awareness and updates, and command and control messages between all platforms, using all transports.
The first iteration of Replicator was launched in August 2023 and continues to support the development of autonomous system capabilities, while the second iteration of Replicator, announced this past September, will focus on tackling the threat of small uncrewed aerial systems.
