Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich will co-direct Project Meridian. The Pentagon study will identify the technology the US military needs to fight future wars. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth commissioned it on Wednesday, the Department of War said.
The findings are due by 28 January 2027, 120 days after the announcement, according to Hegseth’s commissioning memo. The department says they will come as an unclassified report released to the public, with a classified annex. The project will cover every future warfighting domain, “from subterranean depths to the cislunar frontier”, the department said. Cislunar space lies between Earth and the Moon.
The memo names artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics and biotechnology as the fields that will change how wars are fought. Meridian is to find the weapons and technologies troops will need, and propose ways to start developing, testing and fielding them. The Joint Staff and every service branch should be ready to connect their own future warfare research to the project, Hegseth wrote.
Pentagon CTO Emil Michael will commission the project through a partner organisation, which the memo does not name. A team of academic, policy and industry experts will support the three co-directors. Musk is the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX. Luckey co-founded the defence technology company Anduril. Gingrich is a former Speaker of the US House of Representatives.
Hegseth announced it in his State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, CNBC reported. His audience was junior officers and non-commissioned officers.
“Project Meridian, the future of warfare, is not about developing new strategies or new policies,” Hegseth said. Its purpose, he said, is to “identify the domains that we must conquer, and capabilities we must master.”
A command for autonomous warfare
Meridian was one of six initiatives Hegseth unveiled. Another is the Autonomous Warfare Command. The department wants it running as a four-star functional combatant command by 1 October 2027. Its job is to scale autonomous warfare across the US armed forces.
It builds on the department’s Drone Dominance programme. That programme has delivered thousands of robotic systems to the Middle East for Operation Epic Fury, according to the department. Hegseth named two people to run DRPM UxS, the office leading the shift, called Project Agincourt. They are Owen West, director of the Defense Innovation Unit, and Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser. Strasiser was the first enlisted SEAL to graduate from Navy Test Pilot School.
Chips, rare earths and off-grid bases
A third initiative, FORTRESS America, aims to bring military supply chains home, including rare earths, specialty metals, semiconductors and propellants. Every major US military installation is to generate its own power. That way, bases stay online if a cyberattack or sabotage takes down the civilian grid. In April, the Pentagon chose the companies that will put nuclear reactors on bases. FORTRESS America also covers satellites and spectrum, and protecting bases against cyber intrusion, sabotage and drones.
The other three are a new Corps of Cadets at five universities and a contest among states to host a new off-grid base. The last is an Office of Religious Affairs that reports directly to Hegseth.
The day before, the Pentagon picked Boeing over Northrop Grumman for the Navy’s fighter contract, the $20bn F/A-XX programme.