Anthropic, Google and xAI will join OpenAI on the CDAO’s nascent effort to partner with industry on pioneering artificial intelligence projects focused on national security applications. Under the individual contracts — each worth up to $200 million — the Pentagon will have access to some of the most advanced AI capabilities developed by the four companies, including large language models, agentic AI workflows, cloud-based infrastructure and more.

“The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” Chief Digital and AI Officer Doug Matty said in a statement. “Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our Joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems.”

OpenAI received the first contract for the effort June 17 and will create prototypes of agentic workflows for national security missions. According to CDAO, work with all four vendors will expand the Pentagon’s experience with emerging AI capabilities, as well as give the companies better insights into how their technology can benefit the department.

The contract with CDAO is also another win for xAI, which is owned by Musk — who previously led the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts but recently had a falling out with President Donald Trump over legislation and other issues — and develops the generative AI tool called Grok. The company announced Monday that it was launching a new suite of AI tools for U.S. government users known as “Grok for Government.” The platform is now available to purchase by federal agencies through the General Services Administration, according to a post on X, which Musk also owns.

In a blog post published Monday, Jim Kelly, Google Public Sector’s vice president of federal sales, noted that the company will provide the Pentagon its Cloud Tensor Processing Units for training AI models, AI-powered agents via Google’s Agentspace, and access to the company’s infrastructure based in the contiguous United States.

“These advanced AI solutions will enable the DoD to effectively address defense challenges and scale the adoption of agentic AI across enterprise systems to drive innovation and efficiency with agile, proven technology,” Kelly wrote.

The announcement is the latest step the Defense Department has taken in recent months to accelerate adoption of AI-enabled capabilities developed by commercial companies — many of which have recently announced new business ventures focused on national security.

In June, Anthropic introduced a custom set of its Claude Gov AI models that are tailored specifically to defense use cases, ranging from operational planning to intelligence analysis. The same month, OpenAI launched a new initiative called “OpenAI for Government” that expands on its current partnerships with the Defense Department and other U.S. government agencies — including custom AI models for national security.

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Since President Donald Trump began his second term in January, Musk has spearheaded the Department of Government Efficiency’s push across the federal government to find “waste, fraud and abuse,” slash certain types of spending and cut the workforce. A DOGE team was set up at the Pentagon — as well as other federal agencies — to implement those efforts.

“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President  @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk wrote Wednesday night in a post on X, the social media platform that he owns. “The  @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

In a sign that DOGE’s influence will continue at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a new directive this week giving those personnel more oversight of contracting efforts.

“The Department of Defense (DoD) Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team will have the opportunity to provide input on all unclassified contracts. The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (USD(A&S)), or its designee, will coordinate with DOGE to ensure that the opportunity for review of the Performance Work Statement/Statement of Work, accompanying estimates, deliverable descriptions, and requirements approval/validation documents, occurs when the requirements package is provided to a DoD contracting office to initiate a procurement or prior to the package being provided to a non-DoD assisting agency (e.g., General Services Administration),” Hegseth wrote in a May 27 memo to senior Pentagon leadership, combatant commanders, and DOD agency and field activity directors.

“DOGE will also have the opportunity to review any requirements packages for change orders or supplemental agreement modifications to unclassified contracts that result in an increase in the contract price, prior to said modifications. Requirements for procurement actions already in process (i.e., accepted by a contracting activity or a non-DoD assisting agency for execution, but a contract has not been awarded), as of the date of this memorandum, shall also be made available for review,” he added.

Perhaps to mitigate delays, Hegseth’s directive notes that if the DOD DOGE team doesn’t provide input within two business days of receiving a review package, the procurement should “proceed as normal.”

It’s not immediately clear exactly what will happen to a procurement effort if DOGE raises concerns during the review process. Hegseth has directed the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment to create a workflow process with DOGE within two weeks of the issuance of his memo.

The SecDef noted that certain types of requirements packages — including those that support emergency and contingency operations, ops with performance outside the U.S. and its territories, and those that have an estimated total contract value of less than $1 million — will initially be exempted from the new review process.

In a video released Wednesday on X, Hegseth said the Pentagon had already saved more than $10 billion working with DOGE on previous efforts to review spending, including from a “line-by-line audit of over 50 contract vehicles.”

“And we’re just getting started,” he added.

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The moves — outlined in a pair of memos issued to the chief of naval operations, Marine Corps commandant, Navy assistant secretaries and general counsel — are pursuant to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “commitment to strategically rebuild our military, restore accountability to the Department of Defense, cut wasteful spending, and implement the President’s orders,” Phelan wrote.

The IT contracts axed by the SECNAV include those for the Naval Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (NMRO) program.

The NMRO system was designed to provide mobile access for users, embedded job performance aids, lobby functions providing customizable work areas of interest, and 3D interactive renderings of ship systems enabling sailors to click on an object to access technical and logistics data, according to a news release last year from Fleet Force Command.

“The NMRO logistics program is critical software for the Navy. However, for 5 years systems integrators have over-engineered the software to the point where it is unusable. Upon the recommendation of Navy leadership, the current contracts under the NMRO program shall be terminated. This will allow the Program Office to apply the savings towards a new strategy to meet our needs,” Phelan wrote in a new memo obtained by DefenseScoop from a Navy official.

He also directed the Navy’s chief information officer to prepare a new acquisition strategy by July 31, along with management review of the program.

“Collectively, these contract terminations represent over $568 million in total contract value, which we estimate can allow the Navy to repurpose up to $200 million in taxpayer funds in a more effective manner,” Phelan wrote.

“I commend the Navy leaders who raised this opportunity that will result in a more effective fighting force. Moreover, I encourage leaders across the Department of the Navy to follow this example in identifying opportunities to eliminate wasteful spending which we can then re-invest into critical mission needs,” he added.

In a separate memo obtained by DefenseScoop, Phelan ordered the termination of 45 other contracts and grants. He said the cuts target “wasteful spending” on climate change, DEI, social science, and “other activities which are not aligned with DoD and DoN priorities.”

The cuts include grants for studies of “Persuasion, Identity, and Morality in Social-Cyber Environments” and “engendering and leveraging trust in longitudinal human-AI interactions,” among others, according to the memo.

“Collectively, these 45 terminations represent over $87 million in total award value, which we estimate can save up to $41 million in taxpayer funds the Navy can better apply to critical priorities,” Phelan wrote.

The cuts come as Pentagon leadership has been working with the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team, led by tech titan and presidential adviser Elon Musk, to review spending.

“I commend the DOGE team for finding these opportunities to help save the Navy and increase our readiness and warfighting capability,” Phelan said in a video posted on X, the social media platform owned by Musk. “Stay tuned — there’s more to come.”

Earlier this month at the Sea-Air-Space conference, Navy CIO Jane Rathbun noted that the Trump administration’s DOGE team was examining the Navy’s software enterprise and use of commercial software.

“It’s actually being led through the DOD CIO, and it is collaborative and they are asking for information from us. They are asking for information from the industry partners and really understanding how we buy, how we consume, and how we could do it more effectively,” she told DefenseScoop.

Hegseth has also been pushing to rein in Pentagon spending on IT services contracts. About two weeks ago, he issued a directive ordering the termination of several major contracts, with estimated savings of more than $4 billion. He also directed the Pentagon’s chief information officer to draw up plans for in-sourcing, among other measures.

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The review comes as the administration is undertaking a broad look at the Defense Department’s and other federal agencies’ contracts and workforce in search of what it considers wasteful spending and opportunities for savings.

The Navy has been pursuing an initiative known as Information Superiority Vision 2.0, CIO Jane Rathbun noted during a panel Tuesday at the Sea-Air-Space conference.

“It’s all about making the right investments in modernizing, but modernizing with an eye towards effectiveness and efficiency. We’ve got this new administration. We’ve got the DOGE in working with us, and they’re focused on effective consumption of commercial software. Are we doing the best job we can deliver in buying and utilizing the software that we have? So I think the Department of Defense spends like $5.2 billion on just software. And how can we make sure that we’re buying it effectively and getting the biggest bang for our buck … out of that consumption?” Rathbun said.

She told DefenseScoop that the review of the software enterprise is being coordinated through the Pentagon’s Office of the Chief Information Officer.

“It’s actually being led through the DOD CIO, and it is collaborative and they are asking for information from us. They are asking for information from the industry partners and really understanding how we buy, how we consume, and how we could do it more effectively,” she said.

The Navy is a huge consumer of software. For example, it has more than 800,000 software licenses from Microsoft, Rathbun noted.

“It’s a big number. And so are we buying effectively? Are we utilizing the things that we’re buying effectively? There’s always opportunity for improvement. And I would say that’s an area in my portfolio that I want to focus on but have not a lot of people to do that, which is something that has always bothered me and I want to be doing better at is really this optimization concept. I’ve got to continuously modernize but I have to do it in an optimal way,” she said.

She used financial operations as an example of an area where the Navy is working to improve.

“We are making strides in financial operations, big time. But if I cannot really actively manage my consumption of these capabilities in an effective way, then I’m not going to be optimizing my utilization,” Rathbun said.

Trump officially established DOGE via an executive order Jan. 20, the day of his inauguration. Its purpose is to “implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,” according to the directive.

The administration’s DOGE efforts are being led by billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk.

Trump issued another DOGE-related executive order in February, which aims for “a transformation in Federal spending on contracts, grants, and loans to ensure Government spending is transparent and Government employees are accountable to the American public,” according to the EO.

Meanwhile, Pentagon leadership is pushing forward other DOGE-related initiatives.  

Last week, Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg initiated implementation of a DOGE-influenced regulatory review.

The department is also offering a deferred resignation program and voluntary early retirement. And a civilian hiring freeze, with some exemptions, is also in effect at DOD.

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In an off-camera press briefing Tuesday, two senior defense officials provided new information (on the condition of anonymity) regarding the Defense Department’s unfolding effort to shrink its massive civilian employee pool using three main mechanisms.

“I just want to stress — this is a very active process. So when we in [the personnel and readiness directorate] work in connection with services and components, we are taking their very active input and analysis on the employees and the skills and attributes they need to get after the functions the secretary is directing them to do,” an official told DefenseScoop.

At the start of his second administration, President Donald Trump immediately directed federal agencies to drastically reduce their workforces and review existing contracts as part of a broader move to ultimately cut back on what his team views as wasteful spending and inefficiencies. 

Inside the DOD, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a “strategic reduction” of 5-8% of civilian personnel — with a sharp focus on “promoting the department’s lethality, readiness and warfighting ability” while meeting Trump’s mandate, a senior defense official noted.

They confirmed that the department’s civilian workforce encompasses roughly 800,000 appropriated-fund employees, around 100,000 who fall under non-appropriated funds and additional numbers in other categories, such as foreign nationals. 

“So the 5% to 8% figure breaks down to something in the 50- to 60,000 range” slated for termination, the senior defense official said.

DOD leadership is at this point using three primary methods to determine who will be approved or chosen to depart.

“The first is the voluntary employee participation ‘deferred resignation program.’ I also refer to that as the DRP. I know some of you also refer to that as the ‘fork in the road.’ Number two, we’re removing certain probationary employees. And lastly, [we’re] instituting a hiring freeze,” a senior defense official explained.

The DRP is related to the Office of Personnel Management’s offer that allowed federal employees to indicate that they’d like to exit the government and, if approved, continue to receive pay until their resignation goes into effect Sept. 30. 

At the time, OPM dubbed the offer “Fork in the Road,” which echoes a message that tech billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk — who now runs the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — previously sent to Twitter employees after he bought the company and started transforming it into X.

“Today, the department has approved more than 20,000, nearing 21,000, of the applications for employees that volunteered to participate in the deferred resignation program. So those will actually be achieved over time. We’re in the process of placing those employees that were approved on administrative leave. They’ll have a variety of actual departure dates from department employment,” a senior defense official said, suggesting that the majority would be completely separated from the DOD by the end of 2025.

As part of the planned reduction, Hegseth also called for the termination of about 5,400 probationary employees. However, the statuses of those officials are in limbo following a recent court order. 

“That action has become the subject of litigation, and so I direct any further questions about that process to the Department of Justice,” a senior defense official told reporters. 

The third method for decreasing personnel numbers involves the recent initiation of a department-wide, temporary hiring pause, they added — referring to this one as “passive,” instead of voluntary.

“It was directed by the Secretary Hegseth, and we have annually something like an average of 70,000 civilian employees onboard at the department. So it breaks down to something like 6,000 new hires a month. So without having to remove any existing employees through the hiring freeze, that just naturally creates something like 6,000 civilian workforce slots a month of natural attrition,” the official explained.

Security clearances could factor into decisions about who stays and who goes.

“This was not just a blind process, it was a case-by-case process. And certainly, clearances and other aspects of training would be relevant considerations when deciding how to shape any of the workforce directions with respect to probationary employees. I would say something similar when you look at something like DRP. We were [just] speaking about the fact that we worked hand-in-hand with the services to ensure that each application was vetted, and we knew that we could absorb any resulting impacts without harming the department’s readiness,” an official said. “And so that would also include things like clearance level, but no, it wouldn’t just be a de-facto category.”

The briefers did not provide more information about the civilian roles at DOD that are considered key to the new administration’s focus on lethality and readiness — or whether technology positions are in high-priority employment categories.

“Any critical area that the secretary or the services have identified is going to be weighed heavily when determining which portions of the workforce at what skillsets need to be retained,” a senior defense official told DefenseScoop.

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This internal unclassified memo, obtained by DefenseScoop and authenticated by two officials Friday, instructs the Defense Department’s hundreds of thousands of civilian employees to reply to the email — which is slated to be delivered on Monday, March 3 — within 48 hours and to “cc” their supervisors as recipients. 

Hegseth’s dispatch does not specify the exact email address that they’ll need to respond to, or who it will come from.

However, it follows the Office of Personnel Management’s governmentwide guidance released Feb. 24 with directions to respond to an email from hr@opm.gov with the subject line “What did you do last week?”

Before that OPM email hit officials’ inboxes last Saturday, Musk — a billionaire investor, military contractor and close advisor to President Donald Trump — posted on the X social media platform he owns that it would be coming. Musk wrote that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” which sparked fear and confusion across the federal workforce and seemingly conflicted with OPM’s guidance once it was sent out.

Around that time, Pentagon leadership told all of its civilian personnel to hold off on sending any responses to OPM’s inquiry about their productivity.

“On or around February 22, 2025, OPM requested federal civilians to submit approximately five bullet points detailing their prior week’s accomplishments. The Department of Defense initially paused this directive over the weekend but now requires all DoD civilian employees to submit five bullets on their previous week’s achievements,” Hegseth wrote in the new memo issued Thursday.

“Submissions must exclude classified or sensitive information and will be incorporated into weekly situation reports by supervisors. Non-compliance may lead to further review,” the secretary stated.

He further noted that “employees currently without email access due to leave, shift work, temporary duty, or other valid reasons must comply within 48 hours of regaining access.”

Delivering remarks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday, Musk described the OPM email that was issued a few days earlier as a “pulse check review.”

“What we are trying to get to the bottom of is we think there are a number of people on the government payroll who are dead, which is probably why they can’t respond, and some people who are not real people, like they’re literally fictional individuals that … somebody is collecting paychecks on a fictional individual. So, we’re just literally trying to figure out are these people real, are they alive, and can they write an email, which I think is a reasonable expectation for … someone in the public sector,” Musk said.

The businessman, who is leading Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts, didn’t provide any documentation at the time supporting those claims.

DOD’s updated instructions come as thousands of federal employees in D.C. and across the nation have been terminated as part of Trump’s ongoing campaign to address what he views as “waste” by rapidly reducing the size of the government’s workforce.

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Briefing the media in Stuttgart, Germany, during his first official overseas trip as the Pentagon chief, Hegseth shared new details about the Trump administration’s vision for DOGE-related disruption and modernization pursuits — and how they may or may not impact military and civilian personnel in the near term.

“There’s plenty of places where we want the keen eye of DOGE, but we’ll do it in coordination. We’re not going to do things that are to the detriment of American operational or tactical capabilities,” Hegseth said.

Mirroring promises he made on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump set DOGE up the same day he was officially sworn in, Jan. 20.

An executive order formalizing its establishment stated that the organization’s purpose is “to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

Trump immediately tapped Musk — a politically vocal billionaire businessman whose company SpaceX has contracted with the Pentagon and other agencies — to steer DOGE under the designation of “special government employee.” 

Since its launch, the Musk-led team has attracted widespread attention for its controversial probes into federal hubs including the Treasury Department and U.S. Agency for International Development.

“USAID has got a lot of problems that I talked about with the troops — pursuing globalist agendas that don’t have a connection to ‘America First.’ That’s not the Defense Department. But we’re also not perfect either,” Hegseth told reporters on Tuesday.

He confirmed that he hopes to welcome Musk and the DOGE team to the Pentagon “very soon.”

“There are waste redundancies and headcounts in headquarters that need to be addressed. There’s just no doubt. Look at a lot of the climate programs that have been pursued at the Defense Department. [The DOD] is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat. We’re in the business of deterring and winning wars,” Hegseth said. “We want to look forward to finding efficiencies, and many others [including] the way we acquire weapon systems.”

The new SecDef also responded to questions from reporters about the new administration’s strategic military aims in Africa, Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

“As far as external threats, there’s just no doubt the communist Chinese ambitions are robust. Their view of the world is quite different than ours, and whoever carries that mantle is going to set the tone for the 21st century,” he said. 

Hegseth emphasized that Trump “ran on being a peace president” and therefore does not want conflict with China under his leadership. 

“But being strong — peace through strength — is how you deter that. And we want to posture for that, just like we believe the Europeans alongside our support need to on the continent, as well,” he said. 

“The [People’s Republic of China’s] intentions are pernicious, not just in their part of the world, but also in South America and then on the African continent. And America’s posture there, along with allies and partners, is going to matter about contesting that space. So, it certainly remains a priority,” Hegseth added.

In response to reporters’ questions regarding whether the administration is planning to reduce U.S. troops’ presence abroad any time soon, he acknowledged that there’s a broad understanding across DOD that officials are going to review force posture around the world. 

However, he said there “are no plans right now in-the-making to cut anything.”

After meeting with senior military leaders from U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command at their joint headquarters in Germany on his first international trip as SecDef, Hegseth will head to Brussels, Belgium, to attend the NATO Defense Ministerial and the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting.

The defense secretary suggested that, in those engagements, he’ll push for “a rapid peace deal” to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, and urge NATO allies to each spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense (though the U.S. has not pledged to make the same percentage level of investment).

“We’re going to have straight talk with our friends. This kind of urgency of this moment requires friends talking to friends about capabilities, about leadership, about stepping up, about burden-sharing and the incentives to say, ‘The European continent deserves to be free from any aggression, but it ought be those in the neighborhood investing the most in that individual and collective defense.’ That’s common sense, as the president talks a lot about. Common sense is you defend your neighborhood, and the Americans will come alongside you in helping in that defense if and when that happens. And I believe it will,” Hegseth said.

Before concluding the weeklong trip, Hegseth is slated to meet with his counterparts in Poland, where he plans to discuss furthering bilateral defense cooperation and deterrence opportunities along NATO’s eastern flank.

“This is a very important part of the world for us. The president feels that way as well,” Hegseth told reporters.

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Trump officially established DOGE via an executive order on Jan. 20, the day of his inauguration. Its purpose is to “implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,” according to the directive.

Musk, the billionaire businessman who’s leading the organization, has been designated a “special government employee.” He and his team has been making headlines with their controversial probes of organizations like the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is now being gutted amid accusations from the White House of wasteful spending and fraud.

The DOGE team is also turning its attention to other agencies.

“Pentagon, [the Department of] Education, just everything. We’re going to go through everything,” Trump told reporters during a press conference at the White House alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who is in Washington for bilateral talks. “It was so bad with what we just went through with this horrible situation we just went through [at USAID], and I guess 97 precent of the people [there] have been dismissed. It was very, very unfortunate. You’re not going to find anything like that [at some of the other agencies], but you’re going to find a lot. And I’ve instructed him [Musk] to go check out Education, to check out the Pentagon, which is the military. And you know, sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad. But I don’t think proportionally, you’re going to see anything like we just saw” at USAID.

The DOD is the largest department in the U.S. government and has an annual budget of more than $800 billion.

Earlier on Friday during a town hall with troops at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested he’s ready to cut military programs and capabilities that wouldn’t be useful in a fight against advanced adversaries like China.

“There’s a lot of programs around here that we spend a lot of money on that, when you actually war game it, don’t have the impact you want them to. One of the benefits I have is … I don’t have any special interests. I don’t have a background invested in any systems or services. I’m agnostic to that,” he said.

Hegseth also raised the issue of audits.

“We are going to focus heavily to ensure that, at a bare minimum, by the end of four years [of the second Trump administration], the Pentagon passes a clean audit. The American taxpayers deserve that. They deserve to know where their $850 billion go, how it’s spent, and make sure it’s spent wisely,” he said. “I believe we are accountable for every dollar we spend. And every dollar of waste we find or redundancy is a dollar we can invest somewhere else, as President Trump has committed, directly to rebuilding our nation’s military.”

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There are at least 12 AI agents currently being tested at Edwards Air Force Base, Brig. Gen. Doug Wickert, commander of the 412th Test Wing, said during a Dec. 5 briefing with reporters. The autonomous pilots were developed by a range of companies as part of the ongoing Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program, as well as other complementary efforts.

The autonomous agents won’t directly be used in the Air Force’s future programs, but instead are being leveraged to understand how the service will test and train AI in the future, Wickert said. The current testing will feed into how the service will put through trials the first batch of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), which are expected to arrive at the base after General Atomics and Anduril conduct first flights of their prototypes in 2025, he added.

In order to increase trust in artificial intelligence, integrating the technology onto CCA drones will be an “iterative process” featuring “varying levels of autonomy,” he said.

Edwards has been at the forefront of the Air Force’s efforts to develop and experiment with new technologies, including autonomous flight. The base is also the home of the X-62A VISTA (Variable In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft) platform, a modified F-16 Fighting Falcon operated by the Air Force’s Test Pilot School and used for both student curriculum and autonomous flight research.

While capabilities enabled by AI have shown promise for future warfare, Wickert said there’s still much to be learned. There are currently “gaps” in the Air Force’s ability to test in digital environments and the real world, and AI can sometimes do “unexpected things” during live experiments, he noted.

Wickert also pushed back on recent comments from billionaire and tech titan Elon Musk that claim manned aircraft are both antiquated and overpriced in comparison to drones and other lower-cost platforms. An influential advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, Musk has been tapped alongside Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) aimed at restructuring the federal government and reducing wasteful spending.

“There may be someday we can completely rely on robotized warfare,” Wickert said, but projected that would likely be “centuries away” due to the growing complexity of modern combat and a slew of ethical considerations that come with using AI for military operations.

Artificial intelligence is optimal for the military’s current data fusion and situational awareness missions, according to Wickert. Moving forward, the Pentagon will need to have more trust in autonomy that will allow officials to turn towards AI-enabled solutions in the future, he said.

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Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman observed the Starship’s sixth test flight from the company’s Starbase facility in Texas on Tuesday, with SpaceX founder Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump also in attendance. The 400-foot-tall reusable launch vehicle comprises SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft, giving it much larger payload capacity than any other rocket available today.

Although the launch vehicle’s development is critical for NASA’s plans to resume missions on the moon and exploration of Mars, the Space Force is also tracking Starship for military applications — notably for logistics missions, Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, commander of Space Systems Command (SSC), told reporters Thursday.

“We are thinking about how we might use it. We think the first, most logical, given the payload volume, … would be some type of rocket cargo delivery mechanism,” Garrant said during a roundtable hosted by the Defense Writers Group. “[We are] absolutely interested in the potential military utility and definitely following their progress.”

The Space Force recently took the helm of the Air Force Research Lab’s experimental Rocket Cargo Vanguard program, renaming the effort Point-to-Point Delivery (P2PD). The concept seeks to use commercially available rockets to quickly launch military supplies to anywhere on Earth, including non-traditional landing pads both near structures and in remote locations.

In its budget request for fiscal 2025, the service asked for $4 million dollars to “support the detailed engineering design necessary for a P2PD service provider to perform airdrop payload delivery,” with the goal to support U.S. Transportation Command’s resupply missions, according to justification documents.

Garrant also pointed to the rocket’s potential to launch a large number of satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO) — where both the government and commercial space industry are expected to put massive constellations of hundreds of platforms — as a “game changer.” In other cases, Starship could put multiple satellites in LEO to allow other orbital transfer vehicles to carry them to other locations in space.

He added that SpaceX has not approached the Space Force to discuss certifying Starship for future national security missions, but emphasized certification isn’t off the table.

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