Hegseth: Autonomous Warfare Command has always been end state

WASHINGTON — Project Agincourt as a pathway to a four-star-led Autonomous Warfare Command has always been in the cards, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth sa… WASHINGTON — Project Agincourt as a pathway to a four-star-led Autonomous Warfare Command has always been in the cards, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said at the 2026 Association of the United States Army annual meeting and exposition. Last month, Hegseth signed a memorandum detailing the creation of the short-term Project Agincourt, which is charged with laying the groundwork for creating the Autonomous Warfare Command, a new, functional combatant command that will lead the joint force in unmanned autonomous warfare. "Project Agincourt is the end state of something we focused on since Day 1," Hegseth told Owen West, the chief executive officer of the Pentagon's Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, which leads the project.

"We started with drone dominance almost the minute we got here; [the] president put out an executive order," Hegseth said. "We got $1 billion of funding on drone dominance, which we put straight into the hands of operators out into the field." The department plans to field hundreds of thousands of one-way attack systems this year, Hegseth told the audience. In coming years, he said, that'll be in the millions. Drones have been around for a long time, but