Hegseth plans ‘Autonomous Warfare Command’

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gives a State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2026 in Virginia. Alex Wong / Getty Images

The military’s 12th combatant command was among a slew of announcements in a Quantico speech Wednesday.

The Pentagon will create a combatant command to lead its efforts to develop and deploy robotic weapons, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday in a speech peppered with Bible verses and insults to the press.

The new Autonomous Warfare Command, or AUTOWARCOM, will be “a new four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force,” Hegseth said. It is to stand up by Oct. 1, 2027, according to a memo released after his speech.

The secretary seemed to say that planning for the new command would flow from the three-month-old direct reporting portfolio manager for unmanned offensive and defensive systems , whose “culminating mission” will “take place over the course of months, clearing the path for Autonomous Warfare Command.” In the meantime, the office is being given a new task: to “prototype a new construct called warfighting acquisition” that “fuses operators with entrepreneurs in rapid adaptation cycles while distributing decisions and dollars closer to frontline units, to combatant commands.” He said the office would henceforth be led by Owen West , who currently runs the Defense Innovation Unit, and a Navy senior chief petty officer who is both a SEAL and a test pilot. It will also be renamed “Project Agincourt,” the secretary said, miming a bow and arrow.

To further speed the adoption of unmanned technologies, Hegseth said, the Army, Navy, and Air Force Departments will create “new MOS frameworks”—a reference to the job classifications of the Army and Marine Corps—”to support our shift to autonomy. We need institutional knowledge and career paths for a new generation of autonomous warfighters.”

The secretary also announced a committee with a four-month deadline “to creatively look to the future and identify the domains that we must conquer and capabilities we must master.” The committee, dubbed Project Meridian , will be led by defense contractors Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich, the 83-year-old former Speaker of the House whose mixed scientific legacy includes dissolving Congress’ non-partisan scientific advisory office.

Hegseth said that the U.S. military has become “Dependent on foreign mines for rare earths, on overseas factories for microchips, on foreign supply chains for weapons, and on a civilian power grid to keep the lights on at our bases.” So, he said, he is launching an effort to ensure that every U.S. military base will eventually generate its own electrical power; he gave no timeline or cost estimate. He also said the military will increase its stockpiles of munitions and critical supply-chain materials. It will also stockpile medicine and blood, part of what Hegseth called “a national insurance policy for the American homeland.”

As part of this “FORTRESS America ” effort, Hegseth said, the U.S. military will build a new base in the state that makes the best pitch for it. A DOD statement said the base will “serve as a foundational hub for integrated defense operations, distributed command-and-control, and resilient cyber and technological capabilities.” The secretary said the base will cover “hundreds of thousands of acres,” house 15,000 to 25,000 troops, and have structures of “timeless classical architecture” to comply with an August executive order .

Other new initiatives include a planned Office of Religious Affairs that will report to Hegseth personally. “ORA will ensure religious affairs are no longer dispersed across distant bureaucratic layers, giving senior leaders a dedicated capability to protect free exercise, remove policy barriers, identify unmet requirements, and secure the support needed for the Service chaplaincies to succeed,” a DOD statement said.

Hegseth continued a pattern of espousing conservative evangelical religious beliefs in official speeches. He quoted the Bible several times, called children “precious souls made in the image and likeness of God,” and said that “America's military must understand the difference” between God and evil.

The defense secretary also took pains, beginning with the second sentence of his speech and continuing at intervals until his closing thoughts, to lambaste what he called the “hyperventilating” and “delusional” media for, among other things, reporting on the swift depletion of key munitions in the war on Iran. He said “partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops” amounts to “ treason , actually.” He cited no evidence of smears or activism, nor any basis for telling the assembled troops that “it's your movements and bases that they reveal to the enemy.”

Hegseth prompted and drew light applause on a few occasions, a noted change from the resolute silence at his high-profile speech a year ago; the video feed did not reveal whether the clapping came from the carefully selected uniformed senior enlisted leaders and junior officers or others in the audience. “This is decidedly not a trifling matter of decorum or politeness. The safety of the American republic and the constitutional order depend on elected political leaders trusting that the military they have inherited from previous administrations will serve in a nonpartisan fashion,” Peter Feaver, a noted expert on civil-military affairs, wrote before the speech.

NEXT STORY: Polish defense official says US has decided to establish a base in Poland

2026年9月30日，美国国防部长皮特·赫格塞斯在弗吉尼亚州匡蒂科海军陆战队基地发表部队状况报告。图片来源：Alex Wong / Getty Images

周三在匡蒂科发表的演讲中，军方宣布了一系列消息，其中包括成立第 12 个作战司令部。

国防部长皮特·赫格塞斯周三在一次演讲中表示，五角大楼将成立一个作战司令部，领导其研发和部署机器人武器的工作。他在演讲中引用了圣经经文，并对媒体进行了侮辱。

赫格塞斯表示，新的自主作战司令部（AUTOWARCOM）将是“一个拥有类似军种权限的新型四星级作战司令部，旨在提升联合部队的自主和机器人作战能力”。根据他演讲后发布的一份备忘录，该司令部将于2027年10月1日正式成立。

这位部长似乎表示，新司令部的规划工作将由成立仅三个月的无人进攻和防御系统直接汇报项目经理负责，其“最终任务”将在“数月内完成，为自主作战司令部铺平道路”。与此同时，该办公室被赋予一项新任务：构建一种名为“作战采购”的新模式，该模式“将操作人员与企业家融合在快速适应周期中，同时将决策权和资金下放至更靠近前线部队和作战司令部的位置”。他表示，该办公室今后将由现任国防创新部门主管欧文·韦斯特和一位既是海豹突击队员又是试飞员的海军高级士官长领导。部长还宣布，该办公室将被更名为“阿金库尔计划”，并做了个拉弓射箭的动作。

赫格塞斯表示，为了进一步加快无人技术的应用，陆军、海军和空军部门将创建“新的军事职业专长框架”（参考陆军和海军陆战队的职位分类），“以支持我们向自主化转型。我们需要为新一代自主作战人员建立制度知识和职业发展路径。”

这位部长还宣布成立一个委员会，其任务期限为四个月，“以创新思维展望未来，并确定我们必须征服的领域和必须掌握的能力”。该委员会名为“子午线计划”（Project Meridian），将由国防承包商埃隆·马斯克和帕尔默·勒基以及83岁的前众议院议长纽特·金里奇领导。金里奇在科学领域的贡献褒贬不一，其中包括解散国会的无党派科学顾问办公室。

赫格塞斯表示，美军已经“依赖外国矿山获取稀土，依赖海外工厂生产微芯片，依赖外国供应链获取武器，甚至依赖民用电网来维持基地的电力供应”。因此，他表示，他将发起一项行动，确保每个美军基地最终都能自发电；但他没有给出具体的时间表或成本估算。他还表示，军方将增加弹药和关键供应链物资的储备。此外，军方还将储备药品和血液，赫格塞斯称之为“美国本土的国家保险政策”。

赫格塞斯表示，作为“美国堡垒”计划的一部分，美军将在最符合其选址条件的州建造一座新基地。国防部的一份声明称，该基地将“作为一体化防御行动、分布式指挥控制以及弹性网络和技术能力的基础枢纽”。赫格塞斯表示，该基地将占地“数十万英亩”，可容纳1.5万至2.5万名士兵，并采用“永恒的古典建筑风格”，以符合8月份的一项行政命令。

其他新举措包括计划设立宗教事务办公室，该办公室将直接向赫格塞斯汇报工作。国防部在一份声明中表示：“宗教事务办公室将确保宗教事务不再分散在层层官僚机构中，使高级领导人能够专门负责保护宗教自由、消除政策障碍、识别未满足的需求，并确保各军种牧师获得成功所需的必要支持。”

赫格塞斯在正式演讲中延续了其宣扬保守福音派宗教信仰的惯例。他多次引用《圣经》，称儿童为“按照上帝的形象和样式创造的宝贵灵魂”，并表示“美国军方必须明白”上帝与邪恶之间的区别。

国防部长从演讲第二句话开始，就不厌其烦地抨击他所谓的“反应过度”和“妄想症”媒体，尤其抨击媒体报道伊朗战争中关键弹药迅速消耗殆尽的情况。他声称“蓄意抹黑军队的党派活动”实际上等同于“叛国”。但他并未提供任何抹黑或党派活动的证据，也没有任何依据来告诉在场的官兵“正是他们的行动和基地暴露给了敌人”。

赫格塞斯几次引发了轻微的掌声，这与他一年前发表那场备受瞩目的演讲时全场鸦雀无声的场面截然不同；视频画面无法显示掌声是来自精心挑选的身着制服的高级士官和初级军官，还是来自其他观众。著名军民关系专家彼得·费弗在演讲前写道：“这绝非无关紧要的礼仪或礼貌问题。美国共和国的安全和宪政秩序取决于民选政治领导人是否信任他们从前几届政府继承的军队能够以不偏不倚的方式履行职责。”

下一篇报道：波兰国防官员称美国已决定在波兰建立军事基地