Pentagon taps Musk, Luckey and Gingrich to co-lead Project Meridian

The Pentagon has named Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk, Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as co-leads of Project Meridian, a 120-day effort to identify the technologies the U.S. military may need in future wars. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the initiative on Wednesday during a "State of the Force" address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, before junior officers and enlisted leaders.

The project will look decades ahead. According to Hegseth's commissioning memo, its findings are due by 28 January 2027 and will be released as an unclassified public report, accompanied by a classified annex.

What the study will cover

The department said the work will span every future warfighting domain, "from subterranean depths to the cislunar frontier", the space between Earth and the Moon. The memo names artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics and biotechnology as the fields that will change how wars are fought. Project Meridian is to identify the systems troops will need and propose ways to develop, test and field them. Hegseth wrote that the Joint Staff and every service branch should connect their own future-warfare research to the project.

Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, will commission the work through an unnamed partner organisation, with support from academic, policy and industry experts. Hegseth said the effort is "not about developing new strategies or new policies" but about identifying "the domains that we must conquer, and capabilities we must master", CNBC reported.

Why it matters

The appointments put Musk and Luckey in a position to help set the military's technology priorities while their companies compete for Pentagon spending. SpaceX holds a range of defense contracts, including a $4.16 billion Space Force award in May for satellites designed to track and target airborne threats, awarded days after a $2.29 billion satellite communications contract. Luckey's Anduril won a Marine Corps contract worth up to $642 million in 2025 for counter-drone systems.

None of the three co-leads has served in the U.S. military. Musk has said he moved to Canada as a teenager partly to avoid compulsory military service in South Africa. CNBC reported that Anduril, SpaceX, Tesla and Gingrich did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A wider push into autonomous warfare

Project Meridian was one of six initiatives Hegseth unveiled. Another is the Autonomous Warfare Command, which the department wants operating as a four-star functional combatant command by 1 October 2027 to scale autonomous systems across the armed forces. It builds on the Drone Dominance programme, which the department says has delivered thousands of robotic systems to the Middle East for Operation Epic Fury. Hegseth named Owen West to run DRPM UxS, the office behind Project Agincourt.

Sources: CNBC · The Next Web