Project Meridian (U.S. Department of Defense)

On September 30, 2026, Hegseth delivered a “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia to an audience of about 600 E-6 enlisted members and O-3 officers selected by their units for their performance and leadership potential; he announced six initiatives in the speech, of which Project Meridian was one. Musk, Luckey, and Gingrich all attended the address.⁠[1][1][2][1]

Hegseth said Project Meridian concerns the future of warfare and is not about developing new strategies or policies, but about identifying the domains the United States must conquer and the capabilities it must master; the group would focus on discovering, developing, and fielding the weapons and systems that future generations will need in their lifetimes on any future battlefield, “from under the Earth to beyond the Moon,” without any creative limitations. He also said the United States needs to look to the future to achieve technological and military dominance on the battlefield for decades to come.⁠[2][2][3][4]

Hegseth signed a memo establishing Project Meridian the same day. Under the memo, Defense Department Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael will commission the project through an unnamed partner organization, and a team of academic, policy, and industry experts will support the three co-directors; the project is to study the battlefields of the future and the weapons and technologies warfighters may use on them, covering every future warfighting domain “from subterranean depths to the cislunar frontier,” and to propose actionable solutions to start developing, testing, and fielding advanced technology. The memo names artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics, and biotechnology as fields that will change how wars are fought, and calls on the Joint Staff and every service branch to be ready to connect their own future warfare research to the project.⁠[5][2][2][6][2][6][2][2]

The findings are due within 120 days of the announcement, by January 28, 2027, in the form of an unclassified report released to the public and a classified annex. The memo itself does not mention Musk directly; his role comes from Hegseth’s speech and a Pentagon press release. When TechCrunch asked the Defense Department about the partner organization conducting the study, the department referred it to the press release and said it had nothing further to provide beyond the Secretary’s comments.⁠[2][2][3][6]

Project Meridian’s three co-directors are Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceXSpaceXSpaceX is a company founded by Elon Musk in 2002 whose businesses include space transportation, Starlink satellite communications and artificial intelligence. It went public in 2026 under the ticker SPCX.Open the full entry; Palmer Luckey, co-founder of the defense technology company AndurilAnduril IndustriesAnduril Industries is a defense technology company headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, United States, co-founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey and several former Palantir and Oculus employees. It develops autonomous drones, unmanned undersea vehicles, border surveillance towers, counter-drone systems, and the Lattice command-and-control software, and builds its own large-scale weapons manufacturing facilities. As of May 2026, the company was valued at $61 billion.Open the full entry; and Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. SpaceX launches satellites for the U.S. government and operates a satellite network that supports national defense and security missions; Anduril develops autonomous military systems and drones and was recently awarded government contracts to produce long-range missiles and semi-autonomous fighter aircraft.⁠[2][6][6]

Musk previously led the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency until late May 2025; Project Meridian is his first official advisory role in the administration since he left that department. As of the evening of the announcement, Musk had not commented publicly on the appointment.⁠[4][3][3]

The other five initiatives announced alongside Project Meridian were: an Autonomous Warfare Command, planned to operate as a four-star functional combatant command by October 1, 2027 and starting with an interim effort, Project Agincourt, guided by Defense Innovation Unit director Owen West and Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser; “FORTRESS America,” which aims to bring military supply chains home and have every major military installation generate its own power so that bases keep running if the civilian grid is taken down by cyberattack or sabotage; a new “Next Great American Base” to host 15,000 to 25,000 service members; five new corps of cadets at Hillsdale College, Louisiana State University, Liberty University, Mississippi State University, and Tuskegee University; and an Office of Religious Affairs reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense.⁠[2][1][1][2][2][1][1][1]