---
title: "Hegseth Unveils a Drone Warfare Command, With Musk and Luckey as Advisers"
description: "The defense secretary’s plan, laid out at Quantico on Wednesday, also brings supply chains home and elevates chaplains."
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-09-30T21:50:27Z
modified: 2026-10-01T01:00:04Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/hegseth-unveils-a-drone-warfare-command-with-musk-and-luckey-e41254
language: en
tags: ["military", "ai", "drones", "defense", "elon-musk", "us"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Hegseth Unveils a Drone Warfare Command, With Musk and Luckey as Advisers

*The defense secretary’s plan, laid out at Quantico on Wednesday, also brings supply chains home and elevates chaplains.*

By rews desk · September 30, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/hegseth-unveils-a-drone-warfare-command-with-musk-and-luckey-e41254

## In brief

- Hegseth announced six initiatives at Quantico on Wednesday, a year after summoning 800 flag officers to the same base
- A new four-star command, AUTOWARCOM, will handle autonomous and robotic warfare under an effort called Project Agincourt
- Project Meridian, co-led by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich, must deliver first findings within 120 days
- Fortress America would make major U.S. bases self-powered and onshore rare earths, metals, chips and propellants
- The plan also creates an Office of Religious Affairs reporting directly to the defense secretary

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday laid out a plan to remake the American military around autonomous drones, a panel of outside advisers led by Elon Musk and a new Office of Religious Affairs, in a speech that went well beyond the [cuts to generals and admirals](https://rews.cc/a/hegseth-to-cut-20-percent-of-u-s-general-and-admiral-positio-c5d856) that were expected.

Speaking to junior troops at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia — one year after he summoned 800 flag officers to the same base for an address on fitness and culture — Mr. Hegseth announced six initiatives touching weapons development, domestic infrastructure, force positioning and what he called spiritual health.

At the center is a new four-star command for autonomous and robotic warfare, to be called AUTOWARCOM. It will have “service-like authorities,” Mr. Hegseth said, without specifying what those would include, and will be built over the coming months under an effort called Project Agincourt, which pairs commercial developers with active-duty forces, pushes decisions toward front-line units and creates career fields in autonomous warfare.

Mr. Hegseth pointed to Ukraine, where cheap drones now fight alongside expensive conventional weapons, as the model to beat. “Ukraine’s lesson is not that one type of drone wins wars, but rather the need for a purpose-built system that maximizes the ability to adapt,” he said.

The answer, he said, is both: high-end weapons and masses of cheap, expendable systems. “We need bolts of lightning,” he said of costly legacy weapons. “We also need steady wind and rain, mass drones, and other autonomous attritable systems that flip the cost exchange and impose unrelenting pressure on an adversary on the battlefield.”

A second initiative, Project Meridian, will bring together government officials, academics and private-sector figures to study technologies and potential battlefields decades out. It will be overseen by the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, Emil Michael, and co-led by Mr. Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX C.E.O. who ran President Trump’s former Department of Government Efficiency; Palmer Luckey, the founder of the defense contractor Anduril; and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker.

The three will “creatively look to the future and identify the domains that we must conquer, and capabilities we must master,” Mr. Hegseth said, with first findings due within 120 days. Their focus, he added, would be “discovering, developing, and fielding the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in their lifetimes, without any creative limitations or restrictions.”

A third effort, called Fortress America, aims to make every major U.S. military installation able to generate its own power, so bases can keep operating through a cyberattack or a grid failure. It would also pull defense supply chains for rare earths, specialty metals, semiconductors and propellants into the United States.

“If the world supply lines break, and in a real war, they’re going to break,” Mr. Hegseth said, “America keeps fighting anyway.”

The remaining directives include a nationwide competition to build what Mr. Hegseth described as the first major new military installation in the United States in decades, university programs to expand officer development in line with the Trump administration’s values, and an Office of Religious Affairs reporting directly to the secretary to support chaplains across the services.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Hegseth had worked out alongside hundreds of troops. “We’re placing spiritual health at the same level as physical health,” he said. “Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God, because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual. God is good. Evil is not. And America’s military must understand the difference.”