Pentagon taps Musk to Co-Lead Future Warfare Initiative

War Secretary Pete Hegseth is calling Elon Musk back to the federal government.

As part of a six-initiative plan laid out at Marine Corps Base Quantico Wednesday, Hegseth selected the SpaceX CEO and former senior advisor to the president to co-lead an effort dubbed Project Meridian: The Future of Warfare, alongside former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Anduril Industries co-founder Palmer Luckey.

“By leveraging the nation’s premier private-sector innovators, business leaders, and technologists, Project Meridian will discover and accelerate the fielding of advanced systems needed to guarantee decisive deterrence,” DOW said in a statement. “Should deterrence fail, our warfighters must enter any future conflict with the technological advantage secured through today’s foresight, resolve, and preparation.”

Project Meridian is tasked with bringing together academics and industry to explore “the full spectrum of future warfighting domains, from subterranean depths to the cislunar frontier” and will produce an unclassified report of its findings within 120 days of its establishment.

Project Meridian coincided with an initiative to establish a new command for autonomous warfare across the Armed Forces, with plans to stand-up a four-star functional combatant command by Oct. 1, 2027.

Dubbed Project Agincourt, the initiative will be led by the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems (DRPM-UxS) and will include efforts to prototype new acquisition practices for unmanned and autonomous systems. It will work with Congress to craft legislation for budget and personnel authorities.

Owen West, who was director of the Defense Innovation Unit, and Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser will oversee Project Agincourt and are expected to produce plan of action and milestones within 30 days. As part of this plan, West left his role at DIU, which is now led by Travis Metz.

Other initiatives Hegseth announced included:

• The Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy, Supply, and Survivability (FORTRESS America) program, which will require U.S. military installations to generate independent power to safeguard against critical infrastructure attacks that may take the bases offline. The effort will also purport to bring “critical supply chains home — rare earths, specialty metals, semiconductors, and propellants — mined, refined, and built in America by American workers.”
• The Next Great American Base program will designate a new military installation serving as the “foundational hub for integrated defense operations, distributed command-and-control, and resilient cyber and technological capabilities.”
• Establishing America’s Corps of Cadets program at Louisiana State University, Liberty University, Tuskegee University, Mississippi State University and Hillsdale College to create full-time corps of cadets programs and develop priority candidates for officer commissioning.
• Creating the Office of Religious Affairs to serve as the central hub of the department’s religious services and resources for personnel.