Autonomous Weapons

NewsNation, which obtained the letter in advance of its 21 October release, reports a "new Autonomous Warfare Command (AUTOWARCOM) led by a four-star general", and that "Last month, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth created Project Agincourt, which is tasked with ensuring AUTOWARCOM will be operational by Oct. 1, 2027", "led by Owen West, the current director of the Defense Innovation Unit, as chief executive officer, and Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser as chief operating officer". West and Strasiser write: "We face an ... urgent revolution"; "Since the Cold War, American power projection has rested on a small number of sophisticated, expensive weapons. That model has been disrupted"; "Low-cost drones have changed the character, speed and economics of war"; and "Every auditable dollar we spend should reduce cost-per-kill or risk-to-force." A senior Department of War official told NewsNation: "This new four-star command is here to stay ... this is a long-term commitment to how the Joint Force will fight in the future." SOFX reports "about $54.6 billion for the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group" in the fiscal 2027 budget request and Section 917 of the Senate Armed Services Committee's fiscal 2027 NDAA advancing on 11 June on an 18-9 vote. Neither account mentions any vendor dispute, and the letter sets no human-control standard. The memorandum itself returned HTTP 403 to both fetchers.

At the Association of the US Army annual meeting on 14 October, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth set out an Autonomous Warfare Command. Breaking Defense reported it is "envisioned as having service-like authorities to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force" and that "Congress will have to sign off on the plan"; KATV reported the target date to establish the command is 1 October 2027 and quoted Hegseth defending a four-star command: "We need this kind of authority yesterday." Breaking Defense quoted him on the portfolio: "You have autonomy. You have robotics. You have SI [super intelligence]. You have space."

A Department of Defense official said in a statement on 5 October that the Pentagon "has ceased the use of Anthropic products", the BBC reported. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth labelled Anthropic a supply chain risk in February and set the six-month phase-out on 27 February, announcing the Pentagon would stop using it by late August; the BBC writes that "It is not clear why there has been a delay." Multiple people familiar with the matter told the BBC that as recently as the previous week Claude was still being used by the department in research, analysis and intelligence gathering as well as in military operations against Iran, and that it was viewed as a critical tool for sorting through vast quantities of information. The BBC reports the Pentagon has signed contracts with Google, xAI and OpenAI, and that OpenAI tools have been more widely adopted in recent months in some military departments.

Ukrainian air force spokesman Colonel Yuri Ignat told national television on 5 October that "robotic turrets are now being installed on bridges" and that "There have already been shoot-downs" of Russian drones, which AFP says included the bigger, faster and more powerful Geran-5 version. Ignat said the turrets use "optical vision and artificial intelligence to eliminate the human factor and deliver strikes". Sergiy Beskrestnov, a technology adviser to the Ukrainian president, said on Telegram that 12 of the turrets had been installed in Kyiv. Ignat set out the limits himself: the system "can operate at about one kilometre plus. And it works when conditions are favourable, when the attack approach angle is suitable", and "This is not some kind of panacea."

At Marine Corps Base Quantico on 30 September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, as The War Zone and Defense One both quote him, that the Department would establish "a new four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force in the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history". Defense One reported that a memo released after his speech sets stand-up by 1 October 2027, called it the military’s 12th combatant command, and reported that it is contingent on Congress.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said on 14 September at AFA's Air, Space and Cyber conference: "We intend to have at least 500 of these in service by 2032, and they'll be performing many of the same missions that we do with manned fighters today." DefenseScoop reports General Atomics' aircraft is the FQ-42A Vengeance and Anduril's the FQ-44A Fury, both in Increment 1 production, with $996.5 million requested in fiscal 2027 to start procurement at roughly $30 million per aircraft.

The 10 September report details six conventional-weapons cases: "three in China, two in Russia, and one in Yemen". GTG-87001, "a cell of threat actors based in northern Yemen", ran three programmes — a guided rocket using "a commodity phone-class flight computer with final-phase homing guidance"; "a multi-stage ballistic missile with a stated range goal above 2,000 km"; and an "R2000" set that "included a hypersonic glide vehicle variant". Anthropic says the actors test-fired a guided rocket: "This field test appears to have failed: within hours, the actors returned to Claude to work out why it failed."