
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Project Meridian, a 120-day initiative led by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich to identify future military capabilities and technologies needed for the U.S. to maintain a technological edge in warfare.
AI-generated summary
The U.S. military is seeking to anticipate future warfare scenarios and technological needs through external expert input.
The Pentagon is tapping Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, defense technology entrepreneur and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to to identify the military capabilities, technologies and weapons the U.S. may need in future wars, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday.
The initiative, dubbed Project Meridian, will spend 120 days looking years and decades ahead at how warfare could change and what capabilities the U.S. military will need to maintain a technological edge.
"Project Meridian, the future of warfare, is not about developing new strategies or new policies," Hegseth said. Instead, he said, its purpose is to "identify the domains that we must conquer, and capabilities we must master."

Boeing has secured a contract exceeding $20 billion from the Pentagon and U.S. Navy to develop the Sixth-Generation F/A-XX Strike Fighter, replacing the F/A-18 Super Hornet fleet.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius signed a memorandum of understanding to upgrade Bremerhaven's port and Bremen's airport for NATO defense needs in case of an alliance attack, amid European military upgrades due to Russia's war in Ukraine. The plan will cost approximately €1.5 billion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a further increase in Russia's armed forces to 2,441,630 total personnel, boosting active service members by 15,500 in the fourth such decree this year amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.

US officials call the security alert at the RAF Fairford base in England a 'very serious situation', as Trump and Rubio question the decision to grant bail to five suspects arrested near the facility.

British authorities evacuated buildings and deployed bomb disposal teams for a major incident in Whelford near the US-used Fairford air base. Several men were arrested under the Explosives Act.

The Houthi breakthrough on Yemen's western front was enabled by a Russian-Iranian intelligence fusion system. Saudi-led forces are now systematically targeting this command-and-control network, degrading Houthi operational capacity following the Mokha debacle.