The ship left Naval Base San Diego on Nov. 21, 2025, as part of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. It remained at sea even after the carrier group moved on and the Lincoln returned to its home port.

As of Oct. 29, the ship has been deployed for 342 days, a time period that far exceeds the Navy’s commonly cited seven-month deployment benchmark for ships based in the United States. It also comes as the service contends with a persistent surface-ship maintenance backlog, delays at private shipyards and warnings from senior Navy leaders that extended operations could create years of additional pressure on the fleet.

For families waiting at home, the uncertainty has become its own burden.

Marie Bailey, whose husband serves aboard Spruance, told Military Times that families have repeatedly been told the ship would return soon, only to see that expectation pushed back.

“We are hearing they’re supposed to come home sometime next month, but we’ve been hearing about ‘next month’ for several months,” Bailey said.

Extended deployments are not new to the Navy, but that offers little comfort to families counting down the days until a homecoming that continues to appear just out of reach. For them, another extension is not simply a change to an operational schedule, but yet another period of uncertainty.

“We don’t know what to expect anymore, but it’s hard getting your hopes up time and time again,” Bailey added. “Most of the families are just worried about their sailors, knowing how long they’ve been gone.”

Some Spruance sailors also say they feel their experience has been overlooked compared with the sweeping national attention given to the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Two of those sailors, who were granted anonymity due to fear of reprisal, noted that life aboard a destroyer brings its own challenges, even when the ship receives less public attention.

“It’s tight, cramped and just as challenging on the destroyers, if not more than bigger ships,” one sailor said.

The other sailor pointed to the families waiting at home, arguing that the size of a ship should not determine how much attention its crew receives.

“Our boat isn’t as big as an aircraft carrier, but our 300+ families matter to us just as much as anyone else’s,” the sailor said.

The frustration reflects a basic reality of carrier strike groups: Destroyers may operate in the shadow of the aircraft carriers they accompany, but their crews endure the same prolonged separation from home.

For families waiting on a return date, the distinction between a carrier and a smaller warship offers little consolation.

Spruance is not the only Navy destroyer facing an unusually long deployment. The USS John Finn, USS Mustin and USS Rafael Peralta have also had expected return dates pushed from 2026 into 2027, with some planned to stretch over 14 months, according to Defense One.

The extensions illustrate the demands facing the surface fleet, although the Navy has not publicly provided a comprehensive count of destroyers that have had deployments extended.

A fleet under sustained pressure

The Navy’s Optimized Fleet Response Plan organizes a 36-month cycle for ships homeported in the United States. The Government Accountability Office describes the cycle as allocating eight months to depot-level maintenance, 10 months to training and 18 months to deployment and sustainment operations.

Extended deployments can disrupt that sequence, pushing scheduled maintenance later and compressing the time available for repairs, training and preparation before a ship is needed again.

GAO has documented longstanding maintenance challenges across the Navy’s surface fleet. Private ship repair companies took nearly 10,000 days longer than planned, cumulatively, to repair destroyers between fiscal years 2015 and 2022, according to a February 2025 GAO report. The Navy’s surface-ship maintenance backlog reached $2.3 billion in deferred work by August 2022, GAO reported.

In a May 2022 report, GAO found a nearly $1.8 billion backlog in depot-level maintenance for Navy ships, including approximately $1.7 billion for surface ships. About $1.2 billion of the backlog was associated with ships the Navy had proposed for early decommissioning. GAO found that maintenance backlogs contributed to decisions to retire nine ships.

A separate GAO analysis of 10 surface-ship classes between fiscal years 2011 and 2021 found increases in maintenance cannibalizations, casualty reports and delays in depot-level maintenance. Steaming hours declined and costs per steaming hour rose for most of the classes examined.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle warned Oct. 26 that the effects of extended deployments could reverberate through the fleet’s maintenance schedule for years. Speaking at the United States Navy Memorial, Caudle said maintenance availabilities, particularly for destroyers, could snowball as ships return from deployments exceeding 300 days.

“You’re talking hundreds of availabilities and millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars have to be applied to that problem as we start retrograding these destroyers back into their maintenance period,” Caudle said.

“But this is a years-long recovery,” he added. “There is no workaround on that.”

Rear Adm. Kavon Hakimzadeh, commander of Norfolk Naval Shipyard, also warned of capacity constraints as destroyers return from the Middle East. Speaking at a September roundtable hosted by the Center for Maritime Strategy, Hakimzadeh said shipyards would have to manage the volume of returning ships.

“There’s some choke points just based on capacity out there for all the destroyers that are going to be coming back,” Hakimzadeh said. “We’re running the destroyers really hard out there, and I suspect they’re all going to need to go into the same dry dock, and we’re going to have to sequence them in.”

The remarks highlight a constraint beyond identifying the repairs each ship needs: Shipyards must also have the capacity and workforce to complete the work.

The Navy’s maintenance challenges have persisted despite billions of dollars in repair funding.

A December 2025 Congressional Budget Office analysis found that maintenance for Navy destroyers and amphibious ships takes 20% to 100% longer than the service plans for. The cumulative burden for destroyers is substantial: Roughly nine years of a ship’s planned service life is expected to be spent in maintenance, or about one year out of every four.

GAO found that the Navy received nearly $25.9 billion for combat surface-ship maintenance from fiscal years 2020 through 2023, roughly $1 billion more than it had requested. The service reported obligating 99.7% of those funds by the end of fiscal 2023.

GAO has also identified shortages of spare parts and qualified maintenance personnel, along with deferred work, among the constraints affecting maintenance schedules.

What Spruance’s schedule shows

Navy budget documents show that the planned timing of Spruance’s next maintenance period has shifted.

The Navy’s fiscal 2025 operations and maintenance budget listed a scheduled restricted availability for the destroyer from July 3, 2026, through Feb. 21, 2027. A restricted availability is a period when a ship is taken out of normal operations for maintenance and repairs.

In the fiscal 2027 budget, the planned period had shifted to Jan. 19 through April 28, 2027. Based on those dates, the scheduled start moved 200 days later, while the planned completion was bumped to 66 days later.

The availability of sailors to perform maintenance at sea is another factor in the Navy’s efforts to keep ships ready for operations.

In a September 2024 report, GAO surveyed personnel aboard 232 Navy ships about their ability to carry out maintenance while underway. The survey received a 91% response rate.

Sixty-three percent of responding executive officers said it was moderately to extremely difficult for their crews to complete repairs underway with their assigned sailors; 64% said it was similarly difficult to conduct sailor-led maintenance while also meeting classroom training requirements; and 75% reported that it was moderately to extremely difficult for sailors to complete repairs.

GAO also found that the Navy did not track how many sailors assigned to ships were unavailable for duty.

What comes next for Spruance

GAO has recommended that the Navy compare planned depot-maintenance durations with typical availabilities for ships of the same type, while accounting for factors such as age, condition and maintenance requirements.

Such comparisons, according to GAO, could help establish whether a ship’s maintenance period is unusually long.

Spruance’s post-deployment assessment and actual maintenance schedule will show what work the Navy identifies as necessary and how long the destroyer remains unavailable for operations.

Until those details are established, the effect of its record deployment on its future readiness remains uncertain.

The Navy did not respond to Navy Times’ request for comment by publication.

The Government Accountability Office discovered that 29 of 64 efforts outlined in the Defense Department’s Responsible AI Strategy and Implementation Pathway remained incomplete as of April 2026.

According to a report published Oct. 14, the GAO also found that staffing shortages had hindered the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer’s ability to take additional steps to implement responsible AI, which the department uses to help accelerate AI adoption.

GAO recommended that the department address staffing needs in its Responsible AI Division, which falls under the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, and issue a formal charter for the working council.

“Responsible AI should be considered the same as operationally effective AI,” said Owen Daniels, associate director of analysis at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

Effective testing, evaluation, verification and validation practices can help the military manage risks while ensuring systems operate as intended and operators understand their strengths and limitations, Daniels said.

Council ‘at risk of lapsing’

The GAO found that the Responsible AI Working Council did not meet from late 2024 until August 2025.

Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, or CDAO, officials told the watchdog agency that other priorities, including developing guidance for generative AI and contributing to government-wide AI risk-management resources, had prevented the Responsible AI Division from organizing meetings.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., raised a related concern about accountability during a May 2025 hearing regarding the Pentagon’s AI posture.

“It’s my observation that the Defense Department doesn’t lack in the number of principals, but rather, it often struggles with too little clarity in who is responsible for what.”

Officials from four DoD components told the GAO they faced implementation challenges during the hiatus that could have benefited from greater collaboration.

Six of the 10 DoD components surveyed said sharing responsible AI resources and best practices would increase their ability to incorporate the department’s six Responsible AI tenets into their AI use cases.

The council resumed meetings in August 2025, but the GAO found it still lacked a formal charter defining its responsibilities and specifying how frequently it should meet.

“Without a charter that defines roles and responsibilities for the council … and that specifies the frequency of council meetings, the council is at risk of lapsing again,” the GAO report reads. “Such a lapse could increase the risk of DOD facing Responsible AI implementation issues that it would not have the collaborative capacity to swiftly and effectively resolve.”

Slow staffing

CDAO officials told the GAO they were unlikely to fill vacant positions or increase staffing while the office underwent restructuring, following its realignment to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

In response, the GAO argued that “by … taking action to ensure it has staff in place to meet those needs,” CDAO could make better progress toward its goal of accelerating AI across the department.

Daniels said the staffing shortfall could make it more difficult to build AI literacy throughout the force.

“Operationally, the force needs to become AI literate, as warfighters will be responsible for determining when to deploy AI-enabled systems,” he said.

Service members need to understand AI systems’ limitations and recognize when delegating decisions to machines may be inappropriate, rather than defaulting to a machine’s judgment, Daniels said.

“Exercising meaningful human control — or to use the department’s term, appropriate levels of human judgment — over a military AI system requires robustly understanding a system’s operating boundaries through development, rigorous testing and evaluation, and training,” he said.

Congress’ role

The DoD agreed with the GAO’s two recommendations to issue a charter for the Responsible AI Working Council and address the Responsible AI Division’s workforce needs, according to the watchdog.

The GAO also urged Congress to order the department to implement earlier recommendations, including defining the responsibilities of organizations involved in AI activities and assigning responsibility and a timeline for identifying and managing the department’s AI workforce.

In a Sept. 21 letter, Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., Mark Warner, D-Va., and Chris Coons, D-Del., expressed concern that the Pentagon’s AI push could be outpacing its governance efforts.

“Recent events have given us growing concern about the extent to which agencies under your oversight have prioritized acceleration of AI capability adoption and ‘experimentation’ over effective governance,” the letter reads.

Reed has also called for Congress to establish clearer guardrails for military AI.

“Congress must do its job and provide balanced oversight, standards, and rules of the road,” he said.

At the commission’s second meeting, members reviewed two service-level efforts: an Air Force and Space Force pilot in which the commission reported a 60% increase in military spouse placements over three weeks.

Members also called for measuring actual hires, promotions and retention rather than relying on participation figures alone.

The pilot matches spouses with hiring managers before they arrive at their next duty station.

Spouses can use the Air Force Civilian Careers website to identify where they expect to move, even before receiving formal permanent change of station, or PCS, orders. The program then facilitates introductions to hiring managers at the gaining installation.

The pilot entered its second phase in September, expanding to additional installations in the United States and overseas, according to the commission.

The military spouse commission also reported a 70% year-over-year increase in completed job profiles through SpouseWorks, a career and education resource for military spouses. Officials said they are working to make the platform easier to use and improve its ability to connect spouses with employment opportunities. The commission also announced that SpouseWorks is now available to spouses of all ranks.

Jennifer Hegseth, commission chair and wife of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said the increase in completed job profiles suggested that spouses were ready to pursue employment but needed a better way to connect with opportunities.

“So that just shows that spouses are wanting to work, they’re ready to apply, and they just needed the right outlet,” she noted in the meeting.

The Army’s Department of the Army Voluntary Reassignment Program, or DAVRAP, takes that approach a step further by helping eligible civilian employees maintain career continuity when a permanent change of station requires them to relocate.

Launched in May 2025, the voluntary program allows eligible Army civilian employees to seek noncompetitive reassignment to positions at their gaining installations.

The commission reported that more than 11,000 candidates had created profiles since the program launched, with more than 12,000 hiring managers participating across Army installations in the United States and overseas. Members in attendance did not discuss in detail the number of completed reassignments nor specify how many candidates were military spouses.

Linda Lelande, a Coast Guard representative, asked that the Coast Guard be kept in mind along with the other services, and said spouses can face similar employment disruptions when moving between Coast Guard installations.

“They often experience this very same problem where they have a job, maybe in childcare and then they go to another Coast Guard base and have to start over,” Lelande said.

She asked whether the service could adopt elements of the Army’s reassignment model. Commission members said they wanted to identify existing programs that work and expand them rather than create new initiatives without first examining what the services already offer.

Navy representative Angela Perryman urged the commission to measure whether employer partnerships lead to actual hires.

“It’s one thing to say you’re hiring military spouses, but I want to see numbers,” Perryman said. “I want to see how many military spouses have actually been hired into these positions.”

Members also discussed tracking employment outcomes by region and in relation to PCS moves.

The commission did not announce a finalized department-wide expansion plan or implementation deadline. Member discussions underscored the need to assess whether existing programs deliver measurable employment results before determining how they might be adopted more broadly.

A U.S. Navy administrative message, or NAVADMIN, released Monday, establishes the Submarine Chief of the Boat as a general rating equivalent to a command master chief. The Navy said the change is intended to provide a clearer career path, specialized training and advancement opportunities for submarine sailors seeking the leadership position.

The Chief of the Boat, or COB, serves as the commanding officer’s principal enlisted adviser, responsible for issues affecting sailors’ welfare, morale, job satisfaction and utilization, according to the Navy’s enlisted occupational standards.

Previously, the COB was assigned by billet and identified by Navy Enlisted Classification 8COB, according to the Navy’s personnel manual. The existing policy specified a normal 36-month tour and allowed submarine sailors in paygrades E-8, E-8 selectee and E-9 to qualify for the designation.

Under the previous policy, selection involved a screening process for sailors seeking the assignment. Those historical requirements should not be assumed to remain in effect under the new rating; the NAVADMIN directs applicants to the submarine force’s senior enlisted program assignment instruction, COMSUBLANT/COMSUBPACINST 1306.2, for current application requirements and selection criteria.

The new rating is open to active-duty, submarine-designated sailors, all of whom must be submarine warfare qualified. Non-nuclear submarine ratings will be the primary source of candidates, though other submarine-designated personnel may be considered on a case-by-case basis. Selected Reserve sailors are not eligible.

The Navy will immediately convert E-9 personnel currently holding the 8COB designation to COBCM, according to the NAVADMIN.

The announcement does not specify how many sailors are expected to enter the new rating or detail how all existing selection and assignment procedures will change.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed AUSA attendees at the Project Agincourt panel on Wednesday, sharing that the Pentagon is requesting roughly $50 billion in reconciliation funding to support the push to scale autonomous and robotic systems.

This request is part of an effort to make the technology available in far greater numbers.

The figure is separate from the Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which includes $53.6 billion for the Drone Dominance initiative. That request covers $16.9 billion for unmanned-system procurement, $14.4 billion for counter-unmanned systems, $13.5 billion for contested logistics, $4.5 billion for collaborative autonomy and $4.3 billion for institutional systems and personnel. The budget request does not establish that the reconciliation funding Hegseth cited is the same money or that it is dedicated entirely to drone purchases

Hegseth characterized the funding as a one-time investment rather than a recurring annual allocation, intended to accelerate the development and production of autonomous and robotic systems.

“Ultimately we will be dealing with hundreds of thousands of one-way attack systems this year and into the millions in years to come at a pace that this department’s never ever seen before.”

The Defense Secretary said the Pentagon must make it easier for new companies to compete in a defense market long dominated by established contractors and costly platforms. Traditional defense firms remain important, he said, but the department also needs lower-cost systems that can be manufactured at scale.

The Army’s Drone Dominance program offers a concrete measure of that ambition. In a December 2025 announcement, the Army said a $1 billion initiative would fund approximately 340,000 small unmanned aircraft systems for combat units over two years. The service said it expected to deliver tens of thousands of drones in 2026 and hundreds of thousands by 2027.

Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle said the service is broadening access to its programs for companies outside the traditional defense industrial base. The Army, he said, must make room for new entrants while continuing to work with established suppliers.

Telle also described plans to coordinate the Army’s autonomous-systems efforts while distributing capabilities to operational units. The service is developing an approach that incorporates drones, autonomous ground systems, autonomous fires and autonomous lift into future combat operations.

“We have an MOS in the Army, 390A, where warrant officers could keep the speciality and the skills over the duration to teach our soldiers how to do robotics,” Telle added.

Expanding access to Army test ranges is another part of that effort, Telle said. Greater access gives developers more opportunities to test systems and receive feedback from military users. He also described efforts to share lessons across the force rather than have individual units and organizations solve the same problems independently.

Hegseth said the department must remove bureaucratic barriers that slow the adoption of new technology, telling the panel, “I want you to tell me which rules can be signed away.” He urged officials to identify rules and directives that could be changed without involving new legislation to accelerate progress.

The Agriculture Department’s SNAP eligibility information did not accurately reflect changes affecting veterans and the program’s time-limited participation rules as of September 2026, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

GAO also found that veterans face misconceptions and other barriers to applying for benefits and recommended that USDA update its information and develop outreach materials specifically for veterans.

The issue centers on SNAP’s three-month time limit for certain able-bodied adults without dependents who do not meet work requirements. Veterans were among the groups exempt from that time limit from September 2023 through July 2025.

A 2025 law removed the categorical veteran exemption, meaning veterans can now be subject to the time limit unless they qualify for another exception. GAO found that USDA’s eligibility website had not been updated to reflect the change as of September 2026.

Stakeholders told GAO that some veterans believe their VA benefits make them ineligible, that applying would take benefits away from someone else or that the application process is too difficult. They also cited problems with technology, documentation, communication and completing required interviews.

“I lost my job 7 months ago, and I still haven’t found another one to replace it,” explained Derick Broadnax, an Army veteran who was denied SNAP benefits. “Food keeps getting more expensive and getting a good-paying job is tough for everyone to get right now.”

An estimated 1.4 million veterans lived in food-insecure households each year from 2015 through 2020, according to research cited by GAO. An estimated 6.9% of veterans lived in households receiving SNAP in 2024. That figure measures veterans living in households receiving SNAP, not the percentage of veterans eligible for the program.

Of 47 states with USDA-approved SNAP outreach plans for fiscal 2026, 39 identified veterans as a target population. Thirteen planned to provide information or application assistance at veteran facilities or centers, 11 planned to train government or nonprofit organizations that work with veterans, and six planned outreach at veteran events.

USDA issued annual outreach priority memorandums encouraging states to target veterans from fiscal 2022 through fiscal 2025. USDA officials told GAO they did not plan to issue a similar priority memorandum for fiscal 2026 or fiscal 2027. Forty-four states identified veterans as a target population in their fiscal 2025 outreach plans, compared with 39 in fiscal 2026. GAO did not establish that the change in federal guidance caused the decline.

The VA-USDA partnership on veteran food insecurity also has not operated as planned. The agencies established a memorandum of agreement in 2023, but their collaborative efforts slowed after USDA lost key staff in April 2025.

Since then, the agencies have not held the workgroup meeting called for under the agreement and have not completed the agreement’s required annual review. Agency officials told GAO they consider the agreement to still be in place, but the agencies have not reviewed it as specified in the agreement.

VA continues to screen veterans for food insecurity and connect them with assistance. VA screened 4.4 million veterans in fiscal 2025; about 103,000 screened positive and roughly 78,000 accepted referrals to a VA social worker or dietitian. VA social workers can assist veterans with SNAP applications and interviews.

Beginning Oct. 1, federal reimbursement for allowable state SNAP administrative costs fell from up to 50% to 25%, shifting a larger share of those costs to states. GAO did not establish what effect the change will have specifically on veteran outreach.

GAO made four recommendations. USDA should update its SNAP eligibility website, develop and distribute veteran-specific outreach materials in coordination with VA, and establish a formal mechanism for working with VA.

VA received a corresponding recommendation to establish a formal mechanism for working with USDA. Both agencies concurred with the recommendations, and GAO lists all four as open.

The government watchdog found that the Defense Department reported obligating approximately $68 million for immigration detention from Oct. 1, 2024, through May 31, 2026. The Guantanamo operation was one of six new detention-expansion initiatives U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pursued without first developing a comprehensive strategic plan.

By July 2026, ICE had scaled back four of the six initiatives, resulting in wasted or potentially wasted resources, the GAO said in a Sept. 24 report.

A January 2025 presidential memorandum directed DHS and DOD to increase detention capacity at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to 30,000 beds. DOD assembled tents for an initial capacity of 5,000 beds, but the Department of Homeland Security determined they did not meet detention standards.

The tents were taken down and never used to house detained noncitizens, in part because building facilities that met ICE standards was cost-prohibitive. DoD officials told the GAO, “detaining the planned population was deemed infeasible,” and the operation was downsized in mid-February 2025.

DOD’s role in the detention expansion extended beyond Guantanamo.

After DHS requested access to military installations in February 2025, DHS and DoD began planning detention facilities at Camp Atterbury in Indiana and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.

By October 2025, DoD officials said they no longer planned to build detention facilities on other military installations, and DoD and ICE officials told GAO investigators the Indiana and New Jersey facilities did not move forward.

ICE’s request for military assistance had not been rescinded, however, and the agreement has remained active as of August 2026.

At Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, the Army awarded and administered a $1.3 billion task order on behalf of ICE for Camp East Montana, a soft-sided detention facility that opened in August 2025. The Army transferred contract administration responsibilities to ICE at the beginning of fiscal 2026.

A separate GAO report found the Army wasted up to $11.5 million on services at Camp East Montana between Aug. 1 and Aug. 15, 2025, when there were no detained noncitizens housed there. The Army later paid about $423,000 for meals it did not need while the facility operated below planned capacity.

After ICE took over the contract, it paid another $7.1 million for meals it did not need from Oct. 1, 2025, through March 12, 2026. As of August 2026, ICE had not incorporated recommended cost-saving measures into the contract and continued paying for services it did not need.

GAO recommends that ICE develop a comprehensive strategic plan for its detention expansion efforts, including goals, activities and resource needs.

DHS agreed, but said ICE does not expect to complete the plan until Aug. 31, 2027. GAO said more timely completion “may be warranted.”

The Autonomous Warfare Command, or AutoWarCom, will have service-like authorities and is intended to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the military, Hegseth said during his State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, on Wednesday.

Hegseth said the new command is intended to address an acquisition system that cannot keep pace with the speed of technological change on the battlefield.

“The pace of war is changing faster than the process to support it,” Hegseth said.

The announcement comes three months after Hegseth consolidated the Defense Department’s unmanned and autonomous systems under a new Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, or DRPM-UxS. The office reports directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense Steven Feinberg and was established to oversee the development, procurement, fielding and sustainment of unmanned and autonomous systems across the department.

The DRPM-UxS also assumed oversight of existing efforts, including Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Defense Innovation Unit and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group.

During his Wednesday address, Hegseth also announced Project Agincourt, an interim effort intended to prepare the way for AutoWarCom.

Hegseth named Owen West, the director of the Defense Innovation Unit, and Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser to lead the initiative for the next year. He described the two as a “CEO, COO partnership,” with West focused on strategic risks, resources and scale, and Strasiser focused on operational problem-solving and the realities of employing the systems in combat.

Hegseth said a four-star commander will soon be named to lead AutoWarCom, while West and Strasiser will guide Project Agincourt as the department prepares to establish the command.

Agincourt will test what Hegseth called “warfighting acquisition,” bringing military operators, engineers and private companies into rapid development cycles and moving acquisition decisions and funding closer to combatant commands and frontline units.

“This model fuses operators with entrepreneurs in rapid adaptation cycles while distributing decisions and dollars closer to frontline units to combatant commands,” Hegseth said.

Realistic training exercises — and, when possible, combat — will be used to test autonomous systems and determine which technologies should be rapidly expanded, the secretary announced.

The department will also begin phasing in new military occupational specialty frameworks to support the military’s shift toward autonomous warfare, Hegseth said, creating career paths for a new generation of autonomous warfighters.

Hegseth said the Pentagon needs both sophisticated, high-end weapons and large numbers of lower-cost autonomous systems, describing the approach as a “high-low mix.” He compared high-end weapons to lightning and massed drones and other autonomous systems to the wind and rain of a thunderstorm.

“Today, we need both quality and quantity,” Hegseth said.

He went on to liken the establishment of the new command to an act of biblical significance, stating the department was “putting on the full armor of God. Because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual.”

Hegseth pointed to Ukraine as a lesson in the need for systems that can be adapted rapidly as battlefield conditions change. He said the United States must be able to develop, test and modify autonomous systems at a pace that matches the evolution of warfare.

The effort is intended to bring the military’s frontline leaders closer to the engineers and companies developing new technologies, which Hegseth described as the military’s greatest comparative advantage.

In a memorandum signed Tuesday, Hegseth directed the secretaries of the military departments to immediately terminate the practice of appointing civilian faculty to tenured positions and develop hiring plans that prioritize institutional flexibility and faculty contributions to the warfighting mission.

“The primary purpose of our Military Service Academies (MSA) is to prepare the next generation of officers to lead the men and women of the greatest military on Earth,” Hegseth wrote.

Hegseth said tenure can contribute to “academic stagnation” and “faculty complacency” and make institutions less able to adapt to emerging needs.

He also argued that tenure can contribute to curricula drifting from the mission of educating future warfighters toward the research priorities of tenured faculty.

In military academies, civilian faculty have been part of the academic structure for decades. In 1992, Congress enacted legislation that expanded the ability of the academies to employ civilian faculty.

Academy leaders have previously cited tenure as a factor in recruiting and retaining civilian faculty. During a March 2025 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steven Gilland said tenure gives civilian faculty opportunities to advance within their disciplines. Naval Academy Superintendent Vice Adm. Yvette Davids described tenure as a recruiting tool and an incentive for civilian faculty to stay, while Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind said tenure was part of the academic progression for civilian faculty.

The directive does not say that existing tenured civilian professors will lose their tenure, nor does it specify what employment structure will replace tenure for newly hired civilian faculty or how the departments will implement the change.

Hegseth framed the policy as part of a broader effort to reshape the academies around their military mission.

“To ensure our educational institutions remain firmly focused on this warfighting mission, we must address the structural mechanisms that have allowed civilian academic norms to dilute our focus on lethality,” the secretary wrote.

The order was directed toward U.S. Cyber Command and the Defense Intelligence Enterprise in a Sept. 22 memorandum, which says the Defense Department will use its capabilities to protect the reliability of U.S. voting mechanisms from “external manipulation and disruption from foreign actors,” while maintaining the fundamental freedoms that characterize the country.

The memo does not identify a specific foreign actor or any particular election system or voting jurisdiction. Hegseth describes the effort as part of a “whole of government” effort to protect free and fair elections. The midterms will take place Nov. 3.

“Our Nation’s ability to conduct free and fair elections is a steadfast principle of our democracy,” Hegseth wrote. “Assuring and protecting this ability is a no-fail mission and the DoW will do its part in supporting this whole of government effort.”

The memorandum directs the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the directors of the National Security Agency, Chief of Central Security Service, Defense Intelligence Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to carry out their respective roles to counter foreign threats to the elections.

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the directive is intended to protect the integrity of the election process from foreign interference.

“Free and fair elections are the foundation of our republic,” Parnell said. “By working in lockstep with federal, state, and local partners, U.S. Cyber Command and our defense intelligence teams, we will defend the integrity of America’s voting systems, expose foreign malign influence, and ensure our democratic processes remain secure from external manipulation while protecting the fundamental freedoms of the American people.”

Hegseth directed Cyber Command to collaborate with the Department of Homeland Security to counter potential cyber threats from foreign actors targeting the elections.

Hegseth also ordered the Defense Intelligence Enterprise to ensure that every lawful voter can cast their ballot “free from foreign intimidation, coercion, or fear.”

“In America, the people rule,” Hegseth wrote, “and we must ensure that their voice remains sovereign, secure, and entirely undiluted.”