Autonomous Warfare Command and Project Merlin - The Pentagon’s Military Adaptation

The Pentagon is transforming its system to accelerate weapons development and procurement. India should study it carefully

Out of the six reforms Pete Hegseth announced at Quantico, two are especially important for India: creating a new command for autonomous warfare and launching a study of future warfare led by technologists. One focuses on how quickly a military can adapt, while the other shapes what adaptation aims to achieve.

On 30 September, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced six reforms at Marine Corps Base Quantico.

A new Autonomous Warfare Command.
Project Meridian, a study of future warfare.
FORTRESS America, which aims to take US military bases off the civilian power grid and bring critical supply chains home.
A new showpiece base, with states competing to host it.
A new cadet program at five universities.
An Office of Religious Affairs reporting directly to the Secretary. Some of these reforms are about domestic politics. But two tackle a challenge all major militaries, including India’s, now face. Wars are changing faster than military bureaucracies can keep up. The Autonomous Warfare Command is Washington’s way to speed up how the military modernizes weapons. Project Meridian addresses what those updates should be.

A command built to adapt

The Autonomous Warfare Command will be a four-star command responsible for drones, robots and other autonomous systems across the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. The target date is October 2027. Until then, an interim effort called Project Agincourt will prepare the ground.

The leadership approach is different from the usual. Owen West, head of the Pentagon’s Defence Innovation Unit, and Max Strasiser, a senior Navy SEAL, will lead Agincourt, working together like a CEO and COO. Their job, which Hegseth calls warfighting acquisition, is to have soldiers, engineers, and companies work in short cycles: build a system, test it in exercises or combat, fix what doesn’t work, and buy more of what does. This means decisions and funding will shift from Pentagon offices to the commanders and units using the equipment.

The goals of this measure are: the department needs to build a wartime arsenal that focuses on adapting quickly. In practice, the Pentagon will judge its success by how fast it can update its weapons, rather than by any single weapon.

The Pentagon is also shifting its mindset. Hegseth explained that for 40 years, the United States has relied on a few expensive weapons, choosing quality over quantity. Now, he says the military should keep those weapons but also add many cheap, disposable drones. This is a big shift from how American military planning has worked since the 1970s.

Why the UThe** Pentagon has made similar attempt**s before. It set up the Defense Innovation Unit in 2015, launched Replicator in 2023 to deploy thousands of drones, and started the Drone Dominance program in 2025. Each effort had some success, but none solved the main issue: the Army, Navy, and Air Force control most of the funding and tend to spend it on existing programs

The new command is designed to change that. The memo asks the drone office to suggest how to shift funding between the services, which basically means taking money from current programs. The command will move forward only if Congress approves it.

Getting Congress’s approval is crucial. Special Operations Command, set up in 1987, overcame resistance because Congress gave it its own budget and authority to buy equipment. If the new command gets similar powers, it will matter. If not, it will just be another office that coordinates but cannot overrule the services.

The command is already getting real-world feedback. The Pentagon says its drone program has sent thousands of systems to American forces in action against Iran. Few militaries have the chance to test a new way of buying weapons during an actual conflict.

A future-war study run by outsiders

Project Meridian has 120 days, until 28 January 2027, to outline the future of warfare and identify the technologies the US military will need. The study covers everything from underground warfare to space beyond the Moon, focusing on artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics, and biotechnology. It will release a public report along with a classified annex.

The Pentagon’s chief technology officer will lead the project, with Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich as co-directors. Hegseth said the project is not focused on strategy or policy. Its main goal is to identify the weapons and systems that will be important in the future and suggest how to start developing them.

It is logical to involve people from outside the military. Military organisations tend to focus on improving what they already have, while technologists are often better at spotting what could soon be possible.

The risks are also clear. Musk’s SpaceX and Luckey’s Anduril already have big government contracts and could benefit even more from Meridian’s recommendations, but no conflict-of-interest rules have been announced. Many in Washington see Meridian as a sign that the Pentagon wants to work more with newer Silicon Valley companies instead of established contractors. If that’s the case, the study is also about industrial policy, and its results should be viewed in that light.

India adapted fast. Nobody owns the adaptation.

India has acted quickly since Operation Sindoor. In about a year, the Army set up a drone platoon of about 25 soldiers in each of its 380 infantry battalions. It built over 800 drones in-house with small companies, opened drone training centres at its academies, and created new units like the Bhairav battalions. Few armies have changed so much in peacetime in just one year.

How India made these changes is important. Most funding came from emergency procurement, a fast-track process the government uses after a crisis. India used this approach after Uri, Balakot, Galwan, and Sindoor. It works, but only when there’s a crisis. Once the urgency is gone, the system goes back to normal, and the lessons learned rarely become part of the regular budget or planning.

The Army led these changes, while the Navy and Air Force have their own separate drone programs. No single organisation oversees how India’s armed forces adopt, test, and improve autonomous systems together.

India has faced similar decisions before. The Naresh Chandra Task Force suggested creating separate commands for cyber, space, and special operations. But in 2018 and 2019, the government set up agencies instead, which have no command authority or independent budgets.

India is now about to create three theatre commands: one for the China front, one for the Pakistan front, and one for the sea. Theatre commanders will use drones and counter-drone systems. But theatres are organised by geography, and autonomous systems cut across all three. India already runs one command organised by function, the Strategic Forces Command. Autonomy may warrant the same, and the time to decide is while the theatre design is still open.

India’s Meridian question

Most of India’s long-term military plans are classified, and often there isn’t enough funding to match them. India has never ordered a time-limited study of future warfare led by outside technologists and then published the results.

India now has the right people for such a study: a growing private defence industry, start-ups working on drones and AI, the IITs, and DRDO. A brief, public study would make the services explain and defend their ideas about what war in 2035 might look like.

India should learn from Meridian’s strengths and weaknesses. The companies that take part in such a study would also likely bid for the contracts it suggests. Conflict-of-interest rules should be set before anyone is chosen.

What India should take

The American reforms might not succeed. Congress could deny the new command its own budget, and Meridian might end up producing a report that mainly benefits its authors’ companies. Still, the two main questions behind these reforms are relevant for India: who is responsible for adapting the armed forces, and who decides what they should adapt to.

After Sindoor, India responded to the first question with energy and quick thinking. But it still hasn’t created an institution to answer either question in a lasting way.