In a speech last August, Kathleen Hicks listed the two most common questions about Replicator, her two-year pledge to buy thousands of drones and help the U.S. military compete with China.

The Pentagon unveiled a new round of aerial and maritime drones for Replicator, a massive effort to fast-track the delivery ...

This stands in contrast to the Pentagon’s Replicator program, which was set a similar challenge of building large numbers of drones at speed, and aims to deliver just 3,000 drones over two years.

In contrast, determined Ukraine’s drone production now tops 200,000 each month, with median costs below $1,000. The Pentagon tried to mimic that effort with a program called Replicator ...