Pentagon Plans Command for Drones and Robots, Taps Musk to Study Future Warfare

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the Pentagon intends to create a new four-star command to oversee the rollout of drones, robots and other autonomous systems, calling it the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.

Hegseth made the announcement in a State of the Force address to hundreds of junior officers and enlisted leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, NBC News and NPR reported. He did not give a start date for the command in the remarks NBC described.

He also announced what he called Project Meridian, a study of the future of warfare to be led by Elon Musk, the defense-technology entrepreneur Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. According to AFP, as published by Euronews, the group will draw on hand-picked figures from industry, universities and policy circles and is due to report within 120 days. Hegseth said it would look at weapons for battlefields stretching from under the earth to beyond the moon.

The appointment returns Musk to a formal advisory role in the administration after he left the Department of Government Efficiency in May 2025. His companies already do substantial business with the Pentagon. AFP noted that SpaceX is building satellite networks for the planned Golden Dome missile defense system and that his artificial intelligence company, xAI, signed an agreement this year allowing the military to use its Grok chatbot on classified systems. Luckey co-founded Anduril Industries, a fast-growing maker of autonomous military hardware.

The push comes as the war with Iran, now in its seventh month, has exposed the cost of defending against cheap drones. NBC reported that Iranian drones have killed American troops and that the United States has spent hundreds of expensive interceptor missiles countering Iranian attacks. Hegseth pointed to Ukraine’s pioneering use of drones against Russia as a model the American military has studied, arguing that a system built to adapt quickly matters more than any single type of aircraft.

That argument has real support. Officials and analysts across the political spectrum have warned for years that the Pentagon buys weapons too slowly and that inexpensive unmanned systems are changing how wars are fought.

But the announcements drew questions in Congress. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has asked the Army why a drone-focused unit in Europe was ordered to stop that work and convert to a conventional infantry battalion, NBC reported. Hegseth also ordered the services to cut general and admiral positions by 20 percent by January 1, 2027, double an earlier reduction. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement reported by NPR that the day’s news should alarm every American, while Senator Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican, said trimming a top-heavy force might have merit but that he wanted to see the reasoning first.

Because Musk and Luckey both lead companies that sell to the military, their role in setting its technology priorities is likely to draw scrutiny as the study proceeds.