Elon Musk Will Co-Lead Project To Study The Future Of Warfare, Pete Hegseth Announces

BREAKING — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth launches "Project Meridian," Co-led by Elon Musk, to study the Future of Warfare.

"Today, at my direction, I’m announcing Project Meridian — an effort led by America’s best minds to study the future of warfare."

"Under the… pic.twitter.com/mGfF0p6Ij0

— The Patriot Oasis

(@ThePatriotOasis) September 30, 2026

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A defense department press release on the effort, called Project Meridian, described its goal as “identifying the capabilities required to achieve absolute technological dominance on the next-generation battlefield”. The project will run for 120 days and culminate in an unclassified public report of its recommendations.

The defense department’s project brings Musk back into government work a little more than a year after his explosive tenure as leader of Doge, which gutted federal agencies while failing to achieve its stated cost-cutting goals. It is also a sign of how Musk has re-entered the good graces of the Trump administration after a dramatic falling out with the president last year.

Unlike Musk’s role at Doge – which drew heavy public criticism and costly boycotts of his products – the scope and goals of Project Meridian appear as if they will be much less time-consuming for the tech mogul. The project intends to look at how the US military can utilize new technology and also carry out warfare in untested terrains including subterranean depths and on the moon, the defense department stated in its release.

“We are witnessing rapid advances in artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics, biotechnology, among other critical high-tech areas. Combined, these new domains, new ways of fighting, and technological developments will profoundly alter the character of warfare,” Hegseth said in a memo. “To maintain global dominance, the United States must anticipate future operational environments and act decisively to develop the tools to dominate in them.”

Musk and Luckey are far from independent arbiters of the future of warfare. Both have extensive defense department contracts through their companies, with Anduril’s business centered on the government purchasing products that it advertises as the latest advance in warfare.

Gingrich was appointed as a member of the defense policy board in December 2020 during the first Trump administration but was dismissed less than three months later after Joe Biden became president. Going back to the 1990s, he has been warning about the threat of an electromagnetic pulse attack that could knock out US power grids.

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.@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… pic.twitter.com/kYWBxy6Dij

— DOW Rapid Response (@DOWResponse) September 30, 2026

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The Pentagon chief cited lessons learned from the war in Ukraine as motivation for the new command and said that a complementary effort known as Project Agincourt will work to clear the way for the new command and overhaul how the military acquires, tests, and fields drones and other similar weapons.

A memo released by the Pentagon said that the new command aims to go online in October 2027.

The speech also included Hegseth repeating a number of his past criticisms of military culture and saying that he had ordered further cuts to the ranks of senior officers to continue to remove “woke” policy.

He doubled the percentage target for cutting general and flag officer positions in the ranks to 20%, up from a 10% reduction of generals and admirals he had directed in a May 2025 memo.

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