Hegseth puts Musk, Luckey, Gingrich in charge of military future warfare review

This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. End of dialog window. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday announced that xAI CEO Elon Musk, Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) will lead a new Pentagon effort to study the future of warfare, dubbed “Project Meridian.” The Pentagon chief said the project is meant to harness America’s innovators, senior leaders and technologists to look decades into the future and “forecast the creative solution for tomorrow’s conflicts.” “It is futuristic on purpose,” he said of the project, which he said was not meant to develop new strategies or policies. “We should have the humility to recognize that the best forecasters of future conflict do not solely reside inside the Pentagon,” according to Hegseth. “There are obvious biases and risks to asking ourselves to both ask the questions and answer them.” Hegseth said Musk, Luckey and Gingrich, under the leadership of Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, “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, on any future battlefield, from under the Earth to beyond the Moon.” All three men were in attendance at the Pentagon as Hegseth made his announcement, and the Pentagon chief said their first meeting on Project Meridian would happen directly after the event in a sensitive compartmented information facility in the building. “Right after this speech, we are going to hit the ground running, and in that time, Project Meridian will ruthlessly map the trajectory of wars, domains and technologies to ensure this War Department, your War Department, dominates the future,” he said. A memo released shortly after the announcement stresses that the U. S. military “must not take our current advantages for granted” as the world is witnessing rapid advances in artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics, biotechnology and other high-tech areas. “Combined, these new domains, new ways of fighting, and technological developments will profoundly alter the character of warfare,” according to the Sept. 30 memo. “To maintain global dominance, the United States must anticipate future operational environments and act decisively to develop the tools to dominate in them.” Hegseth directed Michael to commission Project Meridian to “study the battlefields of the future, identify which weapons and technologies warfighters will need to harness to dominate in these environments, and propose actionable solutions to start developing, testing and fielding these capabilities” no later than Jan. 28, 2027, or 120 days from now. Project Meridian also will call on “a group of top technologists, innovators, business leaders, policy makers, and national security experts” to come up with proposed solutions. He adds that the Joint Staff and all services should be prepared to connect their future warfare efforts and research to Project Meridian. Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.