Hegseth Hands the Next War to Musk, Luckey and Gingrich, and Gives Them 120 Days

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday put three men who do not work at the Pentagon in charge of imagining how America fights its next wars. Elon Musk, Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will lead a study the department is calling Project Meridian, according to The Hill.

The assignment is broad by design. In Hegseth's words, the group will work on "discovering, developing, and fielding the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in their lifetimes." He set the boundaries of the battlefield as running "from under the Earth to beyond the moon."

What the project is, and is not

The Hill reported that Project Meridian is meant to look decades ahead rather than write new strategy or policy. The three leaders report to Emil Michael, the undersecretary for research and engineering, and will be joined by a team of private-sector technologists and senior leaders. The first meeting was set for a classified room in the Pentagon right after the announcement, and the group has 120 days to deliver initial findings.

Hegseth framed the outside hires as a matter of modesty about what the building knows. "We should have the humility to recognize that the best forecasters of future conflict do not solely reside inside the Pentagon," he said.

Why these three

The case for the roster is easy to make. Musk's rockets carry a large share of what the United States puts into orbit, and his satellites have changed how armies communicate in the field. Luckey built Anduril around the idea that cheap, autonomous, software-driven weapons will matter more than a handful of exquisite platforms. Gingrich has been writing and lecturing about military transformation since before either man founded a company.

The procurement system they are being asked to think past has earned the skepticism. Major programs routinely arrive years late and billions over budget, while adversaries field drones and missiles at a fraction of the cost. A department that takes two decades to deliver a fighter jet is not well placed to guess what 2050 looks like on its own.

The question nobody answered

There is a fair question on the other side, and conservatives who distrust cozy arrangements between government and contractors should be the first to ask it. Musk's and Luckey's companies sell to the Pentagon. A study that recommends what the military should buy next is being led, in part, by men whose firms could build it.

The coverage reviewed for this story does not say whether the three are paid, what ethics rules apply, or whether they will step aside from recommendations that touch their own businesses. Those answers may exist. They have not been made public, and the department should publish them before the findings arrive rather than after.

The assignment also marks Musk's return to a formal role with the administration, a point Axios made in its headline on the announcement.

What to watch

A 120-day clock puts the first findings in late January. Blue-ribbon panels are a Washington tradition, and most of their reports end up on a shelf. The measure of this one will be whether anything in it turns into a budget line and a contract that Congress can see, with the names of the winners attached.