US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Wednesday announced plans to create a new four-star combatant command to leverage AI in warfare. During a “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, Hegseth said the Autonomous Warfare Command (AUTOWARCOM) would be tasked with scaling “autonomous and robotic capabilities across the Joint Force in the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.”
The Pentagon intends to launch AUTOWARCOM by October 2027, but it will need to secure Congressional approval to do so. If approved, AUTOWARCOM will become the military’s 12th combatant command. The last new command was US Space Command, launched in 2019 under the first Trump Administration.
AUTOWARCOM will coordinate drones, robotics, artificial intelligence, and autonomous weapons platforms across the military. It will work to expedite acquisition and deployment of new technologies and seek to make autonomous warfare a central military doctrine.
Hegseth said the necessity of the new command was made clear by the Russia–Ukraine war and its proliferation of low-cost drones in combat. “Today, with…Autowarcom …we institutionalize — and we supercharge — the era of [super intelligence], robotics and autonomous systems, all in order to win,” Hegseth said.
Pentagon critics have taken the War Department to task for continuing to field extremely expensive platforms, such as aircraft carriers, that are increasingly useless in a modern battle. Hegseth’s speech implied that the Pentagon would continue to field such platforms but also explore modern systems.
According to the War Department, Hegseth “announced that he has directed the direct reporting portfolio manager for unmanned systems to lead ‘Project Agincourt,’ an organization that will establish the pathway for [AUTOWARCOM], as well as to execute the existing unmanned systems mission while prototyping a new acquisition model.” He also promised that through Project Meridian, “the Pentagon’s chief technology officer would partner with members of the private sector to study the future of warfare.”
