Department of War Unveils “Autonomous Warfare Command” (and Other Boondoggles)

Guest Post by Simplicius

Days ago Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs Sean Parnell announced that Pete Hegseth’s Department of War is creating the Autonomous Warfare Command, essentially a new “combat command” for drone forces:

Sean Parnell@SeanParnellASW
Today, at Secretary Hegseth’s direction, the Department of War is starting the creation of the Autonomous Warfare Command. This will be a new 4-star combatant command—with service-like authorities—built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the Joint Force in the…

DOW Rapid Response @DOWResponse
.@SECWAR “Today, at my direction—we are announcing the creation of Autonomous Warfare Command, or AutoWarCom: A new 4-star combatant command—with service-like authorities—built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the Joint Force in the fastest peacetime shift in
4:21 PM · Sep 30, 2026 · 439K Views

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This will be a new 4-star combatant command—with service-like authorities—built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the Joint Force in the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.

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Hegseth calls the new command Autonomous Warfare Command or AUTOWARCOM:



It wouldn’t be American if it didn’t have a catchy corporate ring to it.

For those confused about his mention of “SI” in the above video, let us remind that Trump officially renamed Artificial Intelligence to Super Intelligence last week, signing a White House decree which misspelled the name of his own country as the “Unites States”:




And yes, the post is still up on the official account:

The White House@WhiteHouse
White House Accord on Super Intelligence




9:44 AM · Sep 30, 2026 · 24.1M Views

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It’s only fitting that the document is signed by a half-foreign techno-cabal which is now essentially running the country—to them, it no longer matters what that country is called, it’s little more than a digital grazing pasture for their capital extraction harvester.

Recall that just a few of the top tech companies made up the lion’s share of stock market gains in the past two years, and that just the top seven or so make up almost 50% of the current S&P 500 valuation.




It is concerning how much stock—no pun intended—the administration is putting into AI capabilities (ed: apologies to relevant authorities, the author meant to use the official moniker of SI)—



https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/117406176604364910

—given that the much-vaunted SISI (Semi-Intelligent Super Intelligence) cannot catch typos like “Unites States” in official decrees or differentiate between a girl’s school and a terrorist hideout. The polyannish Hegseth clan likewise also does not seem bothered by the results of the Claude-AI-planned Iran war, which has led to an historic strategic defeat for the US.

But in conjunction with the above, the DoW announced another new hallmark initiative called Project Meridian, which seeks to bring onboard Elon Musk and Anduril’s Palmer Luckey to brainstorm and conceptualize what the future of warfare will look like in order to better prepare the US Armed Forces for it.

Pirate Wires broke the news, with the official DoW account reposting:

Department of War CTO@DoWCTO
PROJECT MERIDIAN will provide the transformative vision to secure American dominance across every future warfighting domain. American warriors will be armed with absolute technological superiority because we have the foresight of disruptive minds TODAY.

5:23 PM · Sep 30, 2026 · 88.6K Views

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Today, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is announcing Project Meridian, led by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and former Speaker Newt Gingrich. The project will, per the Pentagon, investigate where future military engagements will happen (think: Mars, the Mariana Trench, or anywhere in between), and new technologies the Department of War must buy in order to win.

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The team will have a limited timeframe with maximum access to the DoW to put together their futuristic report:

Insiders familiar with the effort tell me speed will be accompanied by deep access within the DOW — the team will have experts on speed-dial from areas rarely exposed to research or reform, like the intelligence community or the Defense Innovation Unit (DOW’s Silicon Valley office).

Of course, Palmer and Elon aren’t policy nerds or Pentagon experts. They’re founders. Their job, here, is to envision solutions to the future of war — one that could involve everything from subterranean combat (molemaxxing) to weapons in cislunar space.

They’ll have significant latitude while doing so.

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Molemaxxing. Sounds really useful.

In case you’re concerned, this next paragraph should put your mind at ease about the practicality of this latest venture:

One Pentagon official told me Meridian won’t focus purely on “solving AI or cyber or space.” There are no required reporting areas; instead, Elon and Palmer have carte blanche, alongside the other private sector experts, to think about what I call “weird **** for war.” To quote former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, they’ll explore “unknown unknowns” — going beyond the Pentagon’s known shortcomings (software, AI, and manufacturing) to investigate future vulnerabilities.

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Well, at least it’s totally in line with Hegseth’s general fratboy approach and “revolutionizing” attitude in the armed forces. Expect to hear more whizbang corporate catchphrases, empty slogans, and the usual military leetspeak-bravado about “warrior ethos”, “unmatched lethality across domains”, and things of that stripe.

“Americans have always been at our best when we bring our smartest scientists, engineers, and technologists together to solve the hardest problems in national security,” Palmer said. “Project Meridian is about doing exactly that. Together, we will not only study the wars being fought today but also think seriously about the wars we cannot afford to fight in 2030, 2050, and 2100 — and what America needs to build now to prevent them.”

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Well, that’s reassuring: the future of America’s military in the hands of two eccentric, flip-flopped boho “playboys”. If it works in the Marvel movies, why can’t it work in real life? On the bright side, there’ll be some fat government contracts to be made.

In reality, real advancement is made on the frontlines, by people experiencing the war directly. Here’s Eric Schmidt again reiterating that Russia has gained the innovative edge in Ukraine:



Remember, these latest far-sighted developments come from the same administration and official DoW account which posts things like this, seen earlier today:

Department of War CTO@DoWCTO
The Great Quantum Awakening. GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE

12:58 PM · Oct 8, 2026 · 138K Views

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Who can take this circus seriously anymore? The entire country is falling under the silicone spell of a techno-cartel of silly-con valley clowns and conmen.

When it comes to real world results, the US military hasn’t demonstrated the same level of interest as in the far-off notional and fantastical aspects of arms development. A month ago a Hegseth appointee nixed a new drone unit that was supposed to be learning directly from on-the-ground experience in the Ukraine war:



https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/new-drone-unit-to-be-phased-out-as-hegseths-army-pick-makes-his-mark-ff5f5fc8

The Army took a major step to prepare for wars of the future in January when it established a new battalion in Europe to master the art of fighting with drones and ground robots.

The idea was to learn the lessons of the conflict in Ukraine that has been raging on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s doorstep and develop cutting-edge military systems and tactics to counter the Russian threat.

But the much touted drone assault battalion is being phased out. After participating in a major exercise in Germany in August and September, the unit will report its findings to the Army to guide future experimentation, shed its drone assault role and “refocus on its core warfighting tasks as an airborne infantry battalion,” an Army official told The Wall Street Journal in a statement.

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Didn’t seem they learned much anyway, given the footage released from a joint exercise last year where Ukrainian drones made short work of American armor units:

UKRAINE IS TEACHING AMERICA HOW THE NEXT WAR WILL BE FOUGHT

During joint exercises, a Ukrainian drone drops a tennis ball simulating a fragmentation grenade through the open hatch of a Bradley infantry fighting vehicle crewed by U.S. soldiers.

A crewmember appears to hear the drone and reaches for the hatch. The ball hits him on the head, bounces inside the Bradley, and he slams the hatch shut. In combat, he would have sealed the grenade inside with the crew.

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Not to be deterred, however, Bloomberg announces that NATO is planning to “quickly” defeat Russia with drones and AI:



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-05/nato-drafts-plan-to-defeat-a-russian-attack-with-drones-and-ai

NATO’s top military commander is working on a strategy for achieving a quick victory against a Russian attack on its eastern flank, with a particular focus on integrating new defense technologies like drones and AI into traditional power.

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Bloomberg was made privy to a document fittingly titled “Theory of Victory”—heavy emphasis on “theory”—which outlines how NATO plans to militarily respond to Russia’s imminent invasion of Europe:

The document, called “Theory of Victory,” which Bloomberg has seen in an unclassified form, will be presented by Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Alexus Grynkewich, in Poland on Oct. 12 amid heightened tensions between NATO and Russia.

It is meant to clarify how the alliance would handle a possible incursion into NATO territory, according to senior officials and diplomats familiar with the matter. There have been numerous recent reports that Moscow is considering such action.

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You decide how realistic the document sounds:

But if NATO were attacked, it would block an incursion with a mix of land forces and other assets from NATO’s Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, a concept relying on low-cost drones, minimally crewed systems and AI-enabled targeting. After gaining freedom of maneuver, it would seek to destroy enemy command and control with the goal of defeating Russian forces quickly and overwhelmingly.

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One gets the impression these people are simply picking catch-phrases out of a hat and hoping to sound convincing. They really have no clue how to fight a war and would likely be advised by their “advanced AI systems” to simply capitulate to avoid the embarrassment.

WSJ found a blinding amount of daylight between the administration’s farfetched pipe dreams and the reality of what its sclerotic industrial is actually capable of materializing:



https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/defense-firms-are-rushing-to-boost-missile-output-its-coming-too-late-ea6dd7ea

From the above:

In the wake of the Ukraine war, the Army Science Board—an advisory panel—conducted a study on the defense industry’s ability to increase munitions production. The board found an industrial base that had been hollowed out.

“It’s a miracle that we have anything that blows up,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a member of the panel coordinating the study.

Despite being around since the 1980s, the Tomahawk remains the long-range cruise missile of choice for the U.S. and many of its allies.

But Pentagon missile orders for the Tucson factory dipped so low in recent years that further cuts risked shutting down the Tomahawk line. Contracts to retrofit old missiles with new navigation systems helped keep the factory busy.

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But they claim things are slowly changing, with new government contracts bringing in a “boom time”, at least for missile production.

Given the shocking findings from the “futuristic” Texas plant meant to produce 155mm shells which we covered in a previous article, we can only remain skeptical:

Bombshell Report: Touted “Futuristic” 155mm Factory in Texas Produced Zero Shells in MIC Mega-Flop​

Simplicius
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Aug 14



A bombshell report has been published by ProPublica which has been making the rounds concerning the much-vaunted new General Dynamics factory in Mesquite, Texas which was meant to massively boost US production of critical 155mm artillery shells for Ukraine and beyond.

Read full story

But don’t worry, I’m sure the ribald guys in Hawaiian shirts and names like something out of a badly-localized ‘90s-era Japanese videogame will save the day with their far-out genius and penchant for “weird ****.”

After all, in the Baudrillardian America of the 21st century, establishing the simulacrum of “winning” takes precedence over actually achieving it.

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[ H/T The Burning Platform ]