The Pentagon operates Tesla And EspaceX CEO Elon Musk, defense technology entrepreneur and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to identify military capabilities, technologies and weapons the United States may need in future wars, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday.
The initiative, called Project Meridian, will spend 120 days studying, years and decades in advance, how warfare might change and what capabilities the U.S. military will need to maintain a technological edge.
“Project Meridian, the future of warfare, is not about developing new strategies or new policies,” Hegseth said. Instead, he said, his goal is “to identify the areas we need to conquer and the capabilities we need to master.”
Hegseth said the effort will focus on “discovery, development and fielding” of weapons and systems that future U.S. troops may need on battlefields ranging “from beneath the Earth to beyond the Moon.” He announced the initiative during a “State of the Force” address to junior officers and enlisted leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.
Pentagon technology chief Emil Michael will oversee the project, with Musk, Luckey and Gingrich as co-leads and a broader team made up of government, industry, academia and politics, Hegseth said.
The role puts Musk and Luckey in a prime position to help identify the military’s future technology needs as their companies compete for billions of dollars in DOD business.
Musk’s SpaceX holds a plethora of contracts with the Pentagon. In May, the Space Force awarded the company a $4.16 billion contract to build satellites designed to track and target aerial threats, just days after awarding SpaceX another $2.29 billion contract for a military satellite communications network.
Luckey’s Anduril develops autonomous weapons and other military technologies. The Marine Corps awarded the company a contract worth up to $642 million in 2025 for counter-drone systems.
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