Hegseth announces new four-star command to scale drone and autonomous warfare across the U.S. military

TLDR

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans for a new four-star combatant command to drive military-wide adoption of drones, AI, and command-and-control technology, during a State of the Force address at Quantico.¹
• The full command is targeted to stand up by October 1, 2027; an interim initiative called Project Agincourt will begin the transition sooner, pulling resources from the Defense Innovation Unit and the Drone Dominance program.¹
• The Pentagon has requested $54.6 billion for the effort in the fiscal year 2027 budget.²
• The push mirrors a Senate proposal for a similar four-star unmanned systems command in the pending 2027 defense policy bill, which still needs House approval.¹

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans for a new four-star combatant command intended to drive military-wide adoption of drones, AI, and command-and-control technology, during a State of the Force address at Quantico on 30 September.¹ Hegseth said the shift carries major implications for the force: "The autonomous and robotic revolution has enormous implications for equipment, doctrine, organization," and called AI-enabled drone warfare "the biggest battlefield revolution in generations."¹

The full command, which Air & Space Forces Magazine reports will carry "service-like authorities, built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force," is targeted to stand up by October 1, 2027, with Hegseth directing the Pentagon to work with Congress toward that timeline.¹ Before then, an interim initiative called Project Agincourt will begin the transition, pulling in resources from the Defense Innovation Unit and the Drone Dominance program; it will be guided by DIU Director Owen West and Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser.¹ It has not yet been determined who will command the finished organization or how it will mesh with existing service-level autonomy programs.¹ Hegseth also said the military needs "institutional knowledge and career paths for a new generation of autonomous warfighters."¹

Bloomberg's reporting, citing Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), describes the same initiative as consolidating oversight of drones and robotic systems that individual units previously procured independently, becoming a lasting institutional fixture rather than a short-lived task force, though not a new armed service.² The Pentagon has requested $54.6 billion for the effort in its fiscal year 2027 budget request.² The initiative mirrors a Senate proposal for a similar four-star unmanned systems command included in the pending 2027 defense policy bill, which still needs House approval.¹

Note on sourcing: the two sources use different names for the initiative: Air & Space Forces Magazine calls it the Autonomous Warfare Command, Bloomberg's report calls it the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, and wire coverage (Reuters, via MSN) used the shorthand "Autowarcom." The underlying announcement and scope appear identical; the final name has evidently not settled yet, flagged here rather than picking one.

Note on classification: this is an organizational/force-structure story about the Pentagon scaling its own drone and autonomous-warfare capability, not a counter-UAS story in the narrow sense used elsewhere in this topic's existing subtopics. Filed under counter-uas as the closest existing bucket for large Pentagon drone-program news; flagging as a judgment call tied to the still-open question of whether a 5th subtopic is needed.

Why it matters: this is the most significant organizational shift in how the U.S. military intends to field drones and autonomous systems since the daily Drones beat started tracking this topic, with a budget request an order of magnitude larger than any single program covered here to date.