Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s speech on Wednesday went far beyond the expected deep cuts to the number of generals and admirals, laying out a new blueprint for the military he envisions is needed for future wars.
During a speech to junior troops at Marine Corps Base Quantico — an address delivered one year after the defense secretary summoned 800 flag officers to the same location for a speech on fitness and culture — Hegseth presented six initiatives aimed at significantly changing how the US military develops weapons, protects its domestic infrastructure, positions its forces at home, and cultivates specific religious and patriotic ideals.
For starters, the Pentagon is getting a new four-star command devoted to autonomous and robotic warfare. The new Autonomous Warfare command, or AUTOWARCOM, will have “service-like authorities,” Hegseth said, and will be developed over the coming months through an effort called Project Agincourt. He didn’t specify what the authorities will include, highlighting its focus instead.
“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, pointing to lethal innovations born on the Ukrainian battlefield, where cheap, deadly drones have become a new war weapon alongside expensive conventional weapons.
The secretary told the audience that the Pentagon needs more of each — high-end weapons and large numbers of cheaper, expendable autonomous systems that can overwhelm an adversary.
“We need bolts of lightning,” Hegseth said, referring to 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.”
Project Agincourt is intended to speed the fielding and procurement of autonomous systems by pairing commercial developers with active-duty forces and pushing decision-making closer to front-line units, while also creating new military career fields in autonomous warfare.
“We need institutional knowledge and career paths for a new generation of autonomous warfighters,” Hegseth said.
“Today, with Autonomous War Command, AUTOWARCOM, we institutionalize and we supercharge the era of [systems integrated]-robotics and autonomous systems, all in order to win,” he said.
As the Pentagon transforms itself to more quickly adopt technology already changing warfare, Hegseth wants outside groups and business leaders to help it anticipate what might come next.
A second initiative, Project Meridian, will convene government officials, academics, and private-sector leaders to study technologies and potential future battlefields that could shape conflicts decades from now. The effort will be overseen by the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, Emil Michael, and co-led by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who also oversaw President Donald Trump’s former Department of Government Efficiency, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
The trio will “creatively look to the future and identify the domains that we must conquer, and capabilities we must master,” Hegseth said, working on a compressed timeline to submit their first findings within 120 days. “Their work will be focused on 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 new initiative, called “Fortress America,” will focus on military resilience for future warfare, ensuring military installations and supply chains can withstand major attacks or global disruptions. Through that initiative, Hegseth said, every major US military installation will eventually be able to generate its own power without relying entirely on local electrical grids, allowing bases to operate through a cyberattack or other grid failures.
The initiative would also seek to bring critical defense supply chains into the United States, including rare earths, specialty metals, semiconductors, and propellants.
“If the world supply lines break, and in a real war, they’re going to break,” Hegseth said, “America keeps fighting anyway.”
Hegseth’s other remaining directives involved a major nationwide competition to build what he described as the first major new military installation in the US in decades, new programs at universities to expand officer development in line with the Trump administration’s values, and a new Office of Religious Affairs reporting directly to the secretary to support chaplains and religious activities across the military.
“We’re placing spiritual health at the same level as physical health,” said Hegseth, who did a workout alongside hundreds of troops earlier in the day. “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.”
