Pentagon gives Musk, Luckey and Gingrich future-war study

• Elon Musk, Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will co-direct the Pentagon study.
• Its recommendations are due by 28 January 2027, in a public report with a classified annex.
• The brief calls for proposals to develop, test and field future military capabilities; it does not announce purchases or funding.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Project Meridian at Marine Corps Base Quantico on 30 September. Pentagon technology chief Emil Michael will facilitate the study, which is meant to identify technologies and weapons for future battlefields. The Joint Staff and military services have been told to connect their own future-warfare research to it.¹²

The brief ranges across artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, directed energy, robotics and biotechnology. The project is distinct from the separate Autonomous Warfare Command Hegseth announced at the same address: Meridian is a study, not a new military command.²³

Musk leads SpaceX, which works on US national-security missions, while Luckey co-founded Anduril, a defence contractor that makes autonomous military systems. Their companies’ defence business makes it important to know how the study will handle potential conflicts. The published material reviewed does not identify Meridian-specific recusal rules; that does not establish that no separate safeguards exist.⁴⁵

The full participant list and the partner organisation through which the project will operate have not been publicly identified in the reporting reviewed. The memo’s call for actionable proposals to develop, test and field capabilities could feed into later Pentagon work, but it does not itself commit the department to procurement or funding decisions.⁴²

Footnotes

1. Associated Press, “Hegseth reveals a new drone command and cuts to general ranks”. ↩

2. The Next Web, “Musk, Luckey and Gingrich get 120 days to map America’s future wars”. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Breaking Defense, “Hegseth announces plans for new 4-star drone command, among other initiatives”. ↩

4. TechCrunch, “The Pentagon taps Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey to help decide what the military should do next”. ↩ ↩²

5. The Guardian, “Pete Hegseth appoints Elon Musk to US taskforce on future of warfare”. ↩