Elon Musk has been selected to help lead a new US Defence Department initiative examining the future of warfare, bringing the SpaceX chief back into a prominent government role as the Pentagon pushes towards greater use of artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and advanced military technology.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Project Meridian during a speech to senior military personnel at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on Wednesday. Musk will co-lead the initiative alongside Palmer Luckey, founder of defence technology company Anduril, and former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The project is expected to produce its findings within 120 days.
Hegseth said the project would look beyond conventional military planning to identify the technologies and areas of warfare that the United States would need to master. “The purpose is to creatively look at the future and identify the domains that we must conquer and capabilities we must master,” he said. The Pentagon has described the project as an effort to identify capabilities required for future battlefields, including emerging technological and operational domains.
The initiative comes as Hegseth has placed autonomous warfare and rapidly deployable technology at the centre of his plans for the US military. During the same speech, he announced the creation of a new Autonomous Warfare Command intended to accelerate the development and deployment of robotic and autonomous systems across the armed forces. The Pentagon said the new command will have broad authority to scale autonomous capabilities across the joint force.
Hegseth also referred to the growing role of weapons systems and artificial intelligence capable of operating with limited or no direct human intervention. He said the United States needed to anticipate technological changes in warfare rather than respond to them after they had become established on the battlefield. The Pentagon has set the new initiatives within a broader effort to accelerate drone production, autonomous systems and other emerging technologies.
Musk’s involvement gives the project a direct connection to one of the Pentagon’s major technology contractors. SpaceX holds numerous defence contracts, while Luckey’s Anduril is a defence technology company whose business includes autonomous military systems. Their participation places executives with substantial experience in defence technology at the centre of an exercise intended to determine what capabilities the US military should pursue.
Alongside the technology initiatives, Hegseth announced that the number of general and flag-officer positions across the US military had been reduced by 20 per cent. He said the reduction represented a further 10 per cent cut after an earlier reduction of the same size, bringing the total decrease to one-fifth. The announcement forms part of his wider effort to restructure the senior leadership of the armed forces.
Project Meridian is scheduled to operate for four months, after which its recommendations are expected to be presented publicly, alongside classified material. Hegseth said the initiative would focus on discovering, developing and fielding the weapons and systems that could be required by future generations of American forces.
