Musk, Luckey and Gingrich to co-lead Pentagon's Project Meridian study on future warfare

Elon Musk is returning to an official advisory role in Donald Trump’s administration, co-leading a Pentagon study on how future wars will be fought.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth launched Project Meridian during a “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Wednesday. Musk will co-lead the initiative alongside Palmer Luckey, founder of defence technology company Anduril, and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker.

“Project Meridian will be an effort led by America’s best minds to study the future of warfare,” Hegseth said. “We are leveraging a unique source of American advantage, one our adversaries do not have: our innovators, our senior leaders and our technologists.”

The team, working under the direction of Defence Department chief technology officer Emil Michael, will examine “the battlefields of the future” and the weapons troops may use on them. It has 120 days to submit its findings and propose “actionable solutions to start developing, testing, and fielding” advanced technology.

Hegseth said the project’s purpose was to “creatively look to the future and identify the domains that we must conquer and capabilities we must master”.

The appointment marks what TechCrunch described as Musk’s first official return to the administration’s fold since he left the Department of Government Efficiency last year after a public falling-out with Trump.

Hegseth also announced an Autonomous Warfare Command to accelerate the development and deployment of autonomous systems and drones across the joint force.

TechCrunch noted that putting Musk and Luckey on the panel aligns with their business interests, given that SpaceX launches satellites for the US government and Anduril supplies autonomous military systems.

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