THE PENTAGON ­– The Defense Department’s early effort to build a fleet of small, unmanned craft designed to stymie a Chinese invasion of Taiwan will cost about $1 billion, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said on Monday. Announced last year, the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative is an effort to quickly field swarms of unmanned systems to solve military problems faced by U.S. combatant commanders. The first, Replicator 1, tackles the problem of how to slow or defeat an amphibious invasion of Taiwan with massed lethal surface drones and overhead loitering munitions, USNI News has reported. Split over funding periods, the Pentagon