Characterizing the uncrewed systems industrial base / Bradley Wilson [and eight others].

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilson, Bradley (Systems analyst), author.

Series:

Research report (Rand Corporation) ; RR-A1474-1

Research report ; RR-A1474-1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vehicles, Remotely piloted.

United States. Department of Defense.

United States.

Defense industries--United States.

Defense industries.

Defense industries--China.

Defense industries--Russia (Federation).

China.

Russia (Federation).

Physical Description:

xiv, 151 pages : color illustrations ; 28 cm.

Place of Publication:

Santa Monica, Calif. : RAND Corporation, [2023]

Summary:

The Department of Defense (DoD) has hypothesized that the demand signal for uncrewed systems (UxS) in the coming years will strain the capacity of the U.S. defense industrial base (DIB). DoD asked the RAND Corporation to explore this possibility and assemble relevant risks, issues, and opportunities to support ongoing DoD activities, including complying with statutory requirements to provide annual reports to Congress. The scope of the request covered many types of UxS, including uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), uncrewed ground systems (UGSs), and maritime platforms-specifically, uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) and uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs). The authors consulted a variety of data sources and conducted interviews with officials from military UxS program offices, representatives from commercial entities, and subject matter experts. They examined fragility indicators, such as financial outlook, DoD sales, the number of firms in relevant sectors, and dependence on foreign sources of supply; and examined criticality indicators, such as defense uniqueness, design requirements, skilled labor needs, facility and equipment availability, materials and components with long lead times, and availability of alternatives. This report contains an analysis of required levels of autonomous UxS to meet DIB requirements, data on DIB categories and specific component elements within those categories, an assessment of the posture of the DIB to produce and sustain levels of UxS platforms as required by DoD, the results of a comparative analysis of near-peer nation-states China and Russia, and recommendations on strengthening the DIB.

Contents:

Chapter One: Motivation and Background

Chapter Two: Demand Signals

Chapter Three: U.S. Capacity Assessment

Chapter Four: Assessment of Chinese Uncrewed Defense Industrial Base Systems

Chapter Five: Assessment of Russian Uncrewed Defense Industrial Base Systems

Chapter Six: The Competitiveness of U.S. Exports of Uncrewed Systems

Chapter Seven: Conclusions and Recommendations

Appendix A: Additional Data on Exports and Estimated Future Production of Autonomous Uncrewed Systems by the United States, China, and Russia

Appendix B: Size Categories and Platform Sample Sets

Appendix C: Interview Protocol.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

197740975X

9781977409751

OCLC:

1378185804