Establish the command. Keep the human.

01 · The branch

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced it on 30 September 2026 at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in the State of the Force address. The name is Autonomous Warfare Command, also AutoWarCom. It is planned as a four-star functional combatant command with service-like authorities, to scale autonomous and robotic systems across the joint force. The Department’s public target for full establishment is 1 October 2027. The last new combatant command before this was U.S. Space Command in 2019.

Status

Directed. Not yet raised.

Bridge

Project Agincourt

Clock

1 Oct 2027

02 · Who holds the bridge

The secretary directed the uncrewed-systems direct reporting program to lead Project Agincourt for the year of standup. Two public names. No portraits, no invented ranks beyond what was said.

A four-star to raise the flag has been promised in public and not named. This board will not name one.

Check a line when you understand it. That is a study mark, not a status from the Pentagon.

• 01 · A statute, not a speechCongressA combatant command is created in law and in the Unified Command Plan. Goldwater-Nichols is the pattern. A Quantico announcement starts the clock. It does not raise the flag by itself.
• 02 · A named four-star and a small joint staffDepartment of WarPublic remarks say a four-star will raise the flag. No name is public here, and this board will not invent one. The staff should be small enough to decide.
• 03 · Project Agincourt kept movingOwen West & Max StrasiserDRPM for uncrewed systems becomes the bridge. West, Director of the Defense Innovation Unit, and Senior Chief Strasiser, a SEAL and the first enlisted SEAL through Navy Test Pilot School, run it as a CEO–COO pair until the command exists.
• 04 · Service-like acquisitionAgincourt + the future commandThe public phrase is warfighting acquisition: fuse buying with operating so engineers, operators, and companies iterate on one mission. Dollars have to sit near the people who will live with the machine.
• 05 · A talent lane that is not a posterBuilders, US Tech Force, the servicesRobotics, assurance, chips, factories, test, and power. US Tech Force is a separate public call for government technology talent. This board does not hire for them or for the command. It shows the shape of the work.
• 06 · An industrial base that can surgeAmerican factoriesAttritable systems only matter if they can be built, spared, and replaced here. Motors, boards, batteries, airframes. Made in USA is a supply-chain fact, not a badge.
• 07 · Assurance written down before fieldingOperators and evaluatorsHuman gate, second test, audit, kill switch, sandbox, public-data discipline, and no nuclear or strategic command features on this class of system. If it is not written, it will be skipped on a Friday.
• 08 · Ranges that publish what brokeTest & evaluationIteration dies in a closed slide. The command needs places to break prototypes and a habit of writing the result where the next builder can read it.
• 09 · Energy and logistics railsPower and sustainmentSortie rate is watts, spares, and trucks. A swarm diagram with no charger is fiction. Energy Rails is a mission lane because the fleet stops when the batteries do.
• 10 · One ingest, and a way back if a node diesCommand design — Quantum proposal sits hereSubsystems must not become a second command post. One place commits state. Identity is checked before a door opens. If a node is lost, continuity comes from what was already committed — not from a robot deciding to promote itself.