Characterizing the uncrewed systems industrial base / Bradley Wilson, Ellen M. Pint, Elizabeth Hastings Roer, Emily Ellinger, Fabian Villalobos, Mark Stalczynski, Jonathan L. Brosmer, Annie Brothers, Elliott Grant.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilson, Bradley (Systems analyst), author.

Ellinger, Emily, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vehicles, Remotely piloted.

Defense industries--United States.

Defense industries.

Defense industries--China.

Defense industries--Russia (Federation).

China.

Russia (Federation).

United States.

United States. Department of Defense.

Place of Publication:

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:

Motivation and Background

Demand Signals

U.S. Capacity Assessment

Assessment of Chinese Uncrewed Defense Industrial Base Systems

Assessment of Russian Uncrewed Defense Industrial Base Systems

The Competitiveness of U.S. Exports of Uncrewed Systems

Conclusions and Recommendations.