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The Pentagon creates a four-star autonomous warfare command, and Musk will help plan future war

A four-star command will scale drones and robots across the military, and Musk, Luckey and Gingrich will help decide what comes next.

By Think Facility · October 3, 2026 · US Department of War AI policy Save

On September 30, 2026, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stood in front of 600 junior officers and enlisted leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico and announced a new four-star command for drones and robots. It's called Autonomous Warfare Command. Autowarcom, for short.

That was one of six things he announced. Another was Project Meridian, a study of what war will look like decades out. Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich were sitting in the hall, and Hegseth named all three to lead it alongside the Pentagon's chief technology officer.

Who

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

Where

Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va.

When

Sept. 30, 2026

New command

Autonomous Warfare Command, 4-star level

Study

Project Meridian, the future of warfare

What Autowarcom is for

Once it's set up, Hegseth said, the command will build autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force. He called it "the fastest peacetime shift in modern history." Until then, the department's portfolio manager for unmanned systems runs Project Agincourt, which paves the way for the command and tries out a new way to buy equipment.

Each military department gets new job specialties for autonomy, too. How many, and when the command gets its four-star commander, Hegseth didn't say.

I was a bit surprised by the wording. The Pentagon's own write-up quotes him using the administration's new name for AI (the brackets are the department's).

Who is studying the future of war

Hegseth said Meridian's job is to look a long way ahead and pick the places the military will have to fight, and the tools it'll need there. New strategies and policies are someone else's job.

The department's article says only that the chief technology officer will work with people from the private sector. It doesn't name them. A photo in the same article does show Luckey, Gingrich and Musk on their feet during the speech, and the names are in the speech itself, which you can watch in full on the department's video page.

By the morning of October 3 I couldn't find a post from any of the three about it (I searched X for each of them by name).

The other four

None of them touch AI, granted. Fortress America would have every base run on its own power. States can pitch to host a new base of 15,000 to 25,000 troops. There's a bigger Corps of Cadets, with six universities as partners, and an Office of Religious Affairs that answers to Hegseth directly.

The speech came a year to the day after his last one at Quantico, which was to the military's most senior leaders.