Owen West and Max Strasiser tapped to lead initial effort
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia to unveil a new four-star combatant command for autonomous warfare that will overhaul the way the Pentagon buys, tests and deploys drones and other cutting-edge technologies. The command, which Hegseth called the Autonomous Warfare Command or “AutoWarCom,” is set to be functional in October 2027.
The reorganization overhauls the way the Pentagon buys, tests and deploys drones and other cutting-edge technologies. The Pentagon has proposed $74 billion for drone and counterdrone technology — which would triple spending on autonomous warfare — in what Hegseth described as “the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.”
To launch the new structure, Hegseth is directing a single drone and autonomous-systems office to begin “Project Agincourt,” named after the 15th-century Battle of Agincourt in which English forces defeated a much larger French army with the longbow, considered a superior technology at the time. Hegseth said the U.S. faces a comparable moment, likening the longbow to drones and artificial intelligence.
Initially leading the effort will be Owen West, a former Marine, former assistant defense secretary and former Goldman Sachs trader who has been running the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, along with Max Strasiser, a Navy SEAL test pilot who has built robotic systems in combat. A four-star military officer, yet to be named, would eventually take over the command.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, West said a top priority is to rapidly build an American-made pipeline of cheap unmanned systems so the U.S. can “adapt as quickly as Ukraine in the event of a war.” “Once we apply sustained budget to changed doctrine, we will outperform the world,” West said. “And by snapping in AI, we will be ahead of the world, because we are the leaders in AI.”
The Joint Staff recommended against creating a combatant command for drones earlier this year, citing concerns that doing so would create a misalignment of authorities, according to people familiar with the deliberations. Some combatant commanders have signaled support for the change.
President Trump backs the move, Hegseth said, though he acknowledged it is likely to face resistance inside a department that has historically delegated authority to test and buy weapons to the individual services such as the Army and Navy. Hegseth consolidated many of the Pentagon’s drone and autonomous-systems offices into a single unit in June; the new announcement directs that office to begin building toward the combatant command.
The new command will expand on the Drone Dominance Program West has been running at the Defense Innovation Unit, which uses industry competitions called “gauntlets” in which dozens of companies put commercial drones through realistic military missions. Top performers receive multimillion-dollar orders within weeks of the results, which are posted on a leaderboard for transparency.
At a recent gauntlet in Colorado, quadcopters were sent downrange to attack vehicles, fly through tunnels and navigate buildings resembling an embassy to hunt targets. The drones were required to cost less than $4,000 and be built in the U.S. with mostly American components.
The Pentagon said the program has already delivered thousands of robotic systems to military units, including deployments to the Middle East in support of Operation Epic Fury. West said the Pentagon will soon test bomber drones, unmanned boats and other autonomous systems using the same competition format.
“This is an entirely new way of doing business,” West said. “In the past, operational units have had very little flexibility to purchase the equipment they want at scale and quickly.” The competitions will eventually be handed off to military units that can test and buy the systems that work best for their own forces, he said.