Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday the Pentagon plans to stand up its new drone command using money included in Republicans’ proposed reconciliation bill with no clear path to approval.
Hegseth said the Trump administration is still working with Congress to secure more than $50 billion for autonomy and robotics initiatives, which the secretary views as the Pentagon’s top priority, as part of a much larger mandatory spending bill.
“We’re running fast immediately with the committees to ensure that that reconciliation bill, at a minimum of $350 billion, potentially more, ultimately fills up what this department needs,” Hegseth said during a panel discussion at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington.
The Defense Department is pursuing that money “regardless of what happens” in the midterm elections on Nov. 3, the secretary added. Republicans hope to retain control of the House and Senate; a Democratic flip in either would all but ensure a reconciliation bill falls flat next year.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told reporters in the spring that while Congress may not pass reconciliation funds for defense until after the midterms, he hoped the money would be enacted in November.
But the prospect of another defense spending boost through reconciliation faces headwinds on both sides of the aisle. Fiscal hawks would oppose the idea if it continues to grow the national debt without offsets, while others say the Pentagon may already receive plenty between its $1.2 trillion base budget ask for 2027 and the $156 billion approved for defense in last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
The Pentagon initially sought nearly $54 billion in fiscal 2027 through reconciliation for its Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, a special operations team vetting tactical drones. Hegseth said Wednesday that money would help pay for the Defense Department’s forthcoming Autonomous Warfare Command, as well as its predecessor Project Agincourt, both of which he announced in September — months after talks of “Reconciliation 3.0” began.
The Pentagon hopes to receive upward of $55 billion for those initiatives overall, including $1.2 billion lawmakers approved through reconciliation last year.
“Scaling that quickly requires the architecture of an AUTOWARCOM and the services flowing in the same direction,” Hegseth said. “That’s how you get from 1,000 drones to 100,000 to a million.”
Pentagon Comptroller Jay Hurst recently noted that, as a backup plan if the reconciliation push fails, defense officials and the Hill could try shifting the request into the base budget instead. That would likely require cuts in other areas to accommodate the higher topline, but would get the Pentagon its money in time to establish Autonomous Warfare Command by a self-imposed deadline of Oct. 1, 2027.
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