The future of warfare is already unfolding in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the United States is turning to a familiar ally.
No, it's not the United Kingdom, France, or Germany. Don't make us laugh. It's Elon Musk.
That's because America is facing a complex problem as serious as any posed by an enemy military: it's the increasingly problematic economics of modern welfare.
Cheap drones, artificial intelligence and increasingly sophisticated autonomous weapons are changing the economics of combat. Countries that cannot hope to match America's aircraft carriers, stealth fighters or conventional military strength are finding new ways to threaten much larger opponents. And the price tag for these new capabilities is a fraction of what is being paid to the U.S. military-industrial complex.
Consider Ukraine, where drones have become central to the fight against Russia. Ukrainian forces have repeatedly demonstrated that relatively inexpensive unmanned aircraft can reach deep into Russian territory, attacking energy infrastructure and other strategic targets.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently defended strikes against Russian oil refineries, arguing that Moscow's energy revenues help finance its war. The attacks have become a point of contention even with President Donald Trump, who has pursued arrangements intended to stabilize global fuel supplies.
The biggest lesson has become clear: A country with fewer conventional military resources can impose substantial costs on a more powerful adversary without matching its military equipment dollar-for-dollar.
The Daily Caller News Foundation recently drew attention to the way that Ukraine has used drones to tip the scales more in its favor versus stronger adversary Russia.
“When you are talking about drones, you are implicitly talking about electronic warfare, detonation protocols, the use of AI, and procurement systems,” Razom for Ukraine’s advocacy director, Daniel Balson, told the DCNF. “These are all pieces of a much greater puzzle that when assembled effectively, allows you to compete on the drone battlespace and the US needs to be ready for this chapter of warfare.”
Dr. Paul Schwennesen, an Air Force veteran and analyst providing aid to Ukrainians, went further.
“If you are out of the game for a few months, then return, the game is almost unrecognizable,” he said.
“In the US/Western/NATO system, we are used to innovation being a call and response type process. You’ll see a call from a centralized bureaucracy to fill a predetermined need within the defense system,” Schwennesen added. “What we see in Ukraine is what we call horizontal decision making–a very robust system of innovation happening at a kind of a kitchen table level of design.”
Iran offers another example of this economically asymmetric warfare. Tehran has invested heavily in drones and other comparatively inexpensive weapons, creating capabilities that can be employed directly or supplied to allied militant organizations. These systems can frustrate air defenses, threaten shipping and infrastructure, and force adversaries to expend far more expensive weapons to intercept them.
While the United States has done massive damage to Iran's drone production capabilities over the course of the military conflict, the Iranians' ability to keep launching drones is remarkably resilient.
At the end of March, shortly before the ceasefire was announced, CENTCOM indicated that roughly two-thirds of Iran’s drone production facilities and industrial machinery had been damaged or destroyed, along with about half of the stockpiles, launch equipment, and trained crews that had supported large-scale OWAD warfare. It also stated that launch rates had fallen by more than 90 percent. At the time, some news reports indicated that U.S. intelligence could only confirm destruction of about one-third of the regime’s drone capability, implying a substantial surviving force.
Aviation Week laid out how the U.S.'s usage of drones is not necessarily competing well simply because of the pricetags involved.
The conflicts in Iran and Ukraine are exposing a fundamental flaw in how the United States fields unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The U.S. has lost roughly 25 percent of its MQ-9 Reaper fleet in Iran, each with a $30-$60 million price tag. These are not marginal assets—they are among the most capable in the world and represent a loss of over $1.3 billion worth of traditional large unmanned systems.
The problem is not a lack of capability. It is a mismatch between how UAS are designed and utilized in modern conflicts. For two decades, the U.S. optimized its drone fleet for permissive environments—long-endurance missions launched from fixed runways, supported by large crews, and protected by uncontested airspace.
This traditional model no longer holds.
That is the new math of asymmetric warfare. A military that spends millions of dollars defeating a threat costing thousands can win an individual engagement while losing the larger economic contest. And artificial intelligence threatens to accelerate the trend by making drones more autonomous, improving targeting, coordinating multiple systems and reducing the number of trained personnel needed to operate them.
Military think tank RAND has also explored the suddenly favorable math of "David vs. Goliath" warfare.
While cost asymmetry has always played a role in tactical warfare, we now face more strategic questions because it is so cheap to attack and so expensive to defend.
U.S., European, and Israeli air and missile defenses have performed remarkably well in these conflicts. However, with the technical sophistication of these systems comes a hefty price tag. Now, the advent of cheap commercial drones has sharply tilted the cost asymmetry towards offense.
"These new threats place enormous strain on government finances and industrial supply chains responsible for replenishing depleted missile stockpiles," RAND analyst James Black points out.
Suddenly, the technological advantages that once belonged almost exclusively to major military powers are becoming accessible to smaller states and potentially hostile nonstate actors.
That brings us to Elon Musk. As RedState's Bob Hoge reported September 30, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth tapped Musk, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and defense technology entrepreneur Palmer Luckey to help lead Project Meridian, an ambitious initiative examining the future of American warfare.
Hegseth described the mission as identifying the domains the United States must dominate, with recommendations expected to include a public report and classified annex. Tech Crunch laid out the assignment.
Their job is to “study the battlefields of the future” and the “weapons and technologies warfighters” may use on them, said Hegseth in a letter announcing the project.
The team (it is unclear how many people will be on it) will have 120 days to submit its findings and propose “actionable solutions to start developing, testing, and fielding” advanced technology meant to keep America a dominant military power, per Hegseth.
Hegseth also announced an Autonomous Warfare Command on Wednesday to speed up the development and deployment of autonomous systems and drones.
The Department of War might actually get some outside-the-box thinking because the people selected to lead the project are hardly conventional Pentagon bureaucrats.
Musk built SpaceX into a major force in aerospace and satellite communications while pushing advances in artificial intelligence and robotics. Luckey founded Oculus before launching Anduril Industries, which develops autonomous defense systems. Gingrich brings decades of experience in national policy and strategic thinking.
Predictably, the appointments have drawn criticism. Some question why individuals without traditional military command experience should have such influence over the Pentagon's future. Others point to potential conflicts of interest, particularly because Musk's and Luckey's businesses operate in sectors that could benefit from defense spending.
Those concerns are legitimate matters for procurement oversight. But they also miss an important reason for bringing outsiders into the room. The Pentagon needs people willing to challenge the assumptions that have governed military spending for generations.
America cannot simply keep buying increasingly expensive versions of yesterday's weapons and assume that technological superiority will take care of itself. A billion-dollar platform can become an extraordinarily expensive liability if an adversary develops a cheap, effective means of disabling it.
That does not mean aircraft carriers, fighter jets or conventional forces have suddenly become useless. It means military planners need to reconsider where expensive systems remain indispensable and where lower-cost, distributed and autonomous alternatives can accomplish the mission more efficiently.
In some cases, the answer may be thousands of relatively inexpensive unmanned systems rather than a handful of exquisite platforms. In others, it may be artificial intelligence capable of detecting, tracking and intercepting threats faster than human operators can respond.
And that leads to a much larger national security question. The AI race is not merely a contest over commercial technology. It is becoming an arms race.
For decades, the United States has worried about terrorist networks acquiring sophisticated weapons that could threaten Americans without requiring a conventional army. Now imagine hostile groups gaining access to autonomous drones, AI-assisted targeting, advanced surveillance capabilities and systems that can coordinate attacks with minimal human involvement. The result could resemble a new era of asymmetric terrorism, with smaller groups possessing capabilities that once required the resources of a nation-state.
America's best defense will require more than building its own offensive autonomous weapons. It will need AI systems capable of recognizing emerging threats, anticipating attacks, protecting critical infrastructure and helping military personnel respond before adversaries can inflict serious damage.
But there is a dangerous domestic dimension to this technological revolution. The same artificial intelligence that can identify hostile drone networks overseas could also be used to build intrusive surveillance systems at home.
A government with the ability to monitor communications, track individuals and predict behavior on an unprecedented scale could pose an extraordinary threat to constitutional liberties if those powers are abused.
That is why technological leadership and a commitment to individual freedom must advance together. America needs military innovation, but it also needs leaders who understand that national security is supposed to protect liberty, not provide an excuse to eliminate it.
Project Meridian offers an opportunity to rethink America's military priorities before adversaries force that reckoning upon us. Musk, Luckey and Gingrich have been asked to look beyond the assumptions of today's defense establishment and identify what tomorrow's battlefield will demand.
The challenge is not simply to develop more powerful weapons. It is to build a military that can defeat threats at a sustainable cost, stay ahead of rapidly advancing AI technology and preserve the freedoms it exists to defend.
Because in the next major conflict, the decisive advantage may not belong to the country that spends the most money. It may belong to the country that spends it the smartest.
And what better person to turn to than the man who led the Department of Government Efficiency and runs some of the most successful tech companies in the world?
Elon Musk.
