• Fwd from @ 📝The Age of Drones📝 The US creates a new military command It appears the US has decided to follow in the footsteps of Russia's Defense Ministry. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a separate Autonomous Combat Systems Command (AutoWarCom) within the armed forces. The experience of combat operations in so-called Ukraine prompted the creation of this separate structure, as Hegseth himself acknowledged. He emphasized that wars are won not by a single type of UAV, but by a specially created system that has the ability to adapt quickly. 🔻Details of the new command's creation ▪️The new structure will receive the highest four-star status and unite under one roof unmanned aviation, unmanned naval vessels, ground robotics, and electronic warfare systems for all branches of the military. ▪️Overseeing the transition phase under the aptly named "Agincourt" project has been entrusted to the Director of the Defense Innovation Office Owen West and Navy SEAL veteran Max Strasizeur. Upon achieving full operational readiness, the command will become the 12th in the US armed forces. And, as the name suggests, the tasks for such a formation will be quite specific. 🔻What tasks will AutoWarCom perform? ▪️Production of cheap platforms. The American defense industry has spent decades creating bespoke megaprojects costing hundreds of millions of dollars that the military is unwilling to lose in large quantities. Now the defense focus is shifting to producing hundreds of thousands of cheap disposable drones with AI elements. ▪️Procurement system overhaul. The classic military procurement cycle at the Pentagon stretches over 5–10 years, making it useless in drone warfare conditions where algorithms and radio frequencies change every few weeks. The new command receives direct authority to purchase technologies from commercial startups, bypassing years of inter-service bureaucracy. ▪️Inter-service integration. Coordinating unified UAV standards, ground/naval unmanned systems, and AI algorithms across all branches of the military—the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. ▪️Counter-drone defense. Large-scale development of layered counter-UAS (C-UAS) systems. 🖍For defense giants like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, this means losing their monopoly on military budgets, as funding will begin flowing to startups. To retain government contracts, they will need to restructure their business model from megaprojects to assembly-line production of disposable systems and adaptive software.
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