Pentagon announces new autonomous warfare command to accelerate drone development

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced the creation of a new Autonomous Warfare Command (AutoWarCom) to accelerate the development and deployment of autonomous and robotic military systems across the U.S. armed forces.

Speaking at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on September 30, Hegseth said the new four-star combatant command would have “service-like authorities” and would be responsible for scaling autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force. The initiative is intended to bring together efforts involving drones, artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous command-and-control systems.

The Pentagon plans for AutoWarCom to become operational by October 1, 2027. The eventual command will be led by a four-star officer, although the Pentagon has not yet announced who will hold that position. In the meantime, an interim effort known as Project Agincourt will prepare the organizational and technological foundations for the new command.

Owen West, the director of the Defense Innovation Unit, and Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser have been assigned to guide this interim phase. Project Agincourt is expected to bring military operators together with technology developers and manufacturers in an effort to shorten the time between the development of new systems and their deployment to operational units.

A central objective is to expand the production of relatively inexpensive unmanned systems while incorporating artificial intelligence and autonomous capabilities. Hegseth has argued that modern warfare is increasingly shaped by systems that can be produced at scale and deployed at substantially lower cost than many traditional weapons platforms.

The Pentagon is already pursuing several autonomous weapons programs. The Air Force and Navy, for example, are developing collaborative combat aircraft designed to operate alongside crewed fighter jets, while the Navy is developing the MQ-25 unmanned tanker aircraft.

The establishment of AutoWarCom would represent a major organizational change for the U.S. military as autonomous systems become increasingly integrated into combat operations, intelligence, surveillance and logistics.