Product2 publishers3 min readPublished
Musk, Luckey and Gingrich have until 28 January 2027 to name the military's next technologies
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave the Project Meridian study 120 days to report on what US forces need to fight future wars. Defense-tech vendors now have a report date to plan around, co-written by two executives whose companies already sell drones and satellites to the government.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- The findings will come as an unclassified report released to the public, with a classified annex attached.
- The memo names artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics and biotechnology as the fields that will change how wars are fought.
- Hegseth also wants an Autonomous Warfare Command running as a four-star functional combatant command by 1 October 2027.
- That command builds on the Drone Dominance program, which the department says has delivered thousands of robotic systems to the Middle East.
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Why it matters
- decision Firms building a 2027 forecast have to pick between planning around the January report and planning around the command's stand-up, and only the command sits on a program already delivering hardware.
- exposure Competitors of Anduril and SpaceX will get a public document to check against those companies' product lines, and any close match will draw the conflict questions TechCrunch has already raised.
- constraint Firms outside the co-directors' companies have no stated way to feed the study before it reports, because the organization running it has not been named.
A vendor reading Pete Hegseth's memo [1] could write 28 January 2027 into next year's pipeline forecast as the day procurement direction gets set [2]. What arrives on that date is a set of proposals for how to start developing, testing and fielding the technologies the study picks out [5]. Hegseth drew the boundary himself. "Project Meridian, the future of warfare, is not about developing new strategies or new policies," he said [6]. Its purpose, he said, is to "identify the domains that we must conquer, and capabilities we must master." [7]
In the memo, Hegseth told the Joint Staff and every service branch to be ready to connect their own future warfare research to the project [18].
Who writes the list matters to anyone selling in the same categories. Luckey co-founded Anduril, and Musk is chief executive of SpaceX [9]. Anduril's drones and autonomous systems sit inside the autonomy and robotics fields the memo names [4][10]. SpaceX launches government satellites and runs a network supporting defense missions [10], and the study's scope reaches "the cislunar frontier" [17]. TechCrunch wrote that critics could argue the appointments align with the pair's business interests, since they would be looking for solutions their companies already sell [11].
Pentagon CTO Emil Michael will commission the study through a partner organization the memo does not name [8]. TechCrunch reported that the team's size is unclear, and the department told the outlet it had "nothing further to provide beyond the Secretary's comments." [12]
The same announcement set other dates. The Autonomous Warfare Command's stand-up comes about eight months after Meridian reports [1]. Owen West, director of the Defense Innovation Unit, and Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser will run the office leading that shift, Project Agincourt [15]. A separate initiative, FORTRESS America, covers rare earths, semiconductors, base power, satellites, spectrum and protection against drones [16].
I'd treat 28 January as a reading date and build the 2027 forecast around the programs already buying. The tradeoff is timing. The public report's wording will probably become the vocabulary program offices use, and a firm that ignores it until publication will spend the spring rewriting its pitch to match.
A product sorts on two axes: whether it sits in one of the five named fields, and whether it already has a buyer through Drone Dominance, Agincourt or FORTRESS America [4][14][16].
- Named and already bought: the report confirms a category you sell, and the date to plan for is the command's stand-up [13]. - Named with no current buyer: 28 January is your date, and the public report is the text your next pitch gets checked against. - Bought but not named, as a rare-earth or base-power supplier would be: Meridian is background reading. - Neither: the report tells you whether you are in scope at all.
For a product that competes with something Anduril or SpaceX sells, each recommendation is worth reading against what those two companies already have on contract [10].
What to watch
- Whether the department names the partner organization running Meridian and publishes a route for outside firms to submit input before January.
- Whether the unclassified report released around 28 January 2027 names specific systems or categories that match Anduril or SpaceX products.
- Whether the Autonomous Warfare Command is standing by 1 October 2027 and which programs move under Project Agincourt.