The Pentagon asked Congress for $54.6 billion for the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group in its 2027 budget. Six months on, Congress has written $1 billion of it into bills.
That $1 billion is the part requested as ordinary discretionary funding. The House-passed defence authorization bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s version and the House Appropriations Committee’s spending bill all provide it in full, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The other $53.6 billion was requested as mandatory money through a budget reconciliation package. No reconciliation bill has been enacted. Nor has any part of the 2027 defence budget: the House spending bill has waited on the House calendar since 26 June.
A condition in the Senate
The Senate committee’s bill attaches a string. Its section 837 would limit the funds available to the group until the department delivers reports that earlier defence acts required, CRS says. The same section covers the Defense Secretary’s travel budget.
Neither authorization bill is law. The House passed its version on 22 July, by 216 votes to 212. The Senate has not taken its own up: a vote to open debate failed on 14 July, 50 to 46.
A command by 2027
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has meanwhile said where the effort is meant to end up. At Marine Corps Base Quantico on 30 September he announced an Autonomous Warfare Command, to become a four-star functional combatant command by 1 October 2027. His department called it “the fastest peacetime operational shift in modern military history”.
Until then the work runs as Project Agincourt, led by the Pentagon’s portfolio office for uncrewed systems. Hegseth put Owen West and Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser in charge of it as chief executive and chief operating officer. West took leave as director of the Defense Innovation Unit, and his deputy Travis Metz became acting director, DefenseScoop reported on 2 October. At the Association of the United States Army’s meeting on 14 October, Hegseth said the four-star command had always been the end state.
On 21 October West and Strasiser set out how they mean to run it, in an open letter to the services and industry. Buying decisions and money would go to frontline units. “Evidence will decide outcomes,” they wrote. “Competitions, exercises and combat performance will determine which systems scale, and which are cut.”
Neither the Pentagon’s release nor its news story on the letter gave a budget figure, a timetable short of October 2027, or a way for companies to bid.
Southern Command already runs an Autonomous Warfare Command of its own for its region. Its first operation described in public is Saronic’s Corsair drone boats, kept on after an August exercise to patrol with Panama’s National Aeronaval Service.
The House spending bill puts the group’s $1 billion beside $1.4 billion for Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Pentagon’s counter-drone office. Until a reconciliation bill passes, that $1 billion is under 2 percent of what was asked.
