The Department of Defense (DoD) is increasing its investments to improve satellite control in space and develop collaborative autonomous drones, a senior Pentagon official announced.
Central to these efforts is the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER), said Thomas Browning, acting assistant secretary of Defense for Mission Capabilities, during a discussion at the Hudson Institute on Oct 29.
Browning noted that most RDER projects are classified and focus on specific missions or challenges. In the latest round of proposals, RDER selected 23 projects, with four successfully transitioning to the services as programs of record. He also mentioned that about a dozen more could still move forward.
“We got some amazing inputs, … [and] so we got a nice list of very logistics-focused activities, a nice list of forward base defense activities, and we’re executing the prototyping on those right now,” Browning said.
He added that space control, support for the terrestrial fight, and autonomous collaboration are a few of the areas the RDER is looking at for 2026.
The RDER was launched in 2021 as a whole-of-DoD initiative that facilitates rapid modernization by focusing prototyping and experimentation efforts on Joint multi-Component challenges caused by the rapidly changing military landscape.
The first round of RDER investments garnered over 200 proposals aimed at transitioning commercial prototypes for military use. At least seven projects are in the pipeline, focusing on surveillance and communication technologies.
Looking ahead to 2026 investments, Browning emphasized that defense leaders are focused on space control, support for ground operations, and autonomous collaboration.
“How am I leveraging space to help that joint fight fully evolve” as low Earth becomes crowded with thousands of satellites, Browning said. “And then the second one … was this idea, if we’re going to put a whole bunch of unmanned vehicles out there in the forward edge of the fight, how are they not killing each other? How are they talking to each other? How are they synchronizing?”
Additionally, Browning announced that RDER will soon issue a call for proposals for fiscal year (FY) 2027.
“RDER will screen these proposals and select those most highly aligned for multi-Component experimentation of DoD senior leaders’ approval,” Browing said.
Despite the mentioned successes, the Senate Appropriations Committee remains less than enthusiastic about RDER. The DoD’s initial FY 2025 budget request includes $450 million for RDER, but the committee’s version of the defense spending bill, released in August, would cut funding for the program, citing the “failure to transition enough programs in FY 2023.”
