TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A US Navy official said on Tuesday the first phase of a plan described as a “hellscape” of drones to oppose China’s People’s Liberation Army in the Taiwan Strait is on track to be operational by August.

US Navy Captain Alex Campbell said the Replicator initiative would meet the goal set by the US Defense Department in November last year, per USNI News. Campbell said the US$1 billion (NT$32.81 billion) plan is rapidly producing surface and aerial weapons-equipped drones and related software systems for the US Indo-Pacific Command.

Speaking at a US Naval Institute conference in California, Campbell said the program has moved fast. He said the program has been taking different software and hardware and "smashing them all together at a pace that is really more akin to commercial software tempos.” 

Campbell spoke alongside the US Navy’s director of integrated warfare Christopher Sweeney, who said working on the Replicator has made the Navy consider what it needs autonomous systems for. “We need to learn. We need to fail and adapt,” he said.

Chris Brose, representative of US defense contractor and drone maker Anduril, said the program's development will be atypical for the US defense department. “The program is going to be inherently fluid,” he said.

USNI News reported that US Pacific Fleet Commander Steve Koehler called for more cheap and deadly systems during a keynote speech at the conference on Tuesday. He said he wants more systems for sailors to experiment with and deploy.

The Replicator initiative reportedly involves deploying thousands of unmanned submarines, surface vessels, and aerial drones in the Taiwan Strait. It is designed to be launched if a Chinese invasion of Taiwan occurs.