Signal Pentagon requests $54.6B for Defense Autonomous Warfare Group; Joint Chiefs: autonomous weapons "key and essential"

Summary

The Pentagon requested $54.6 billion for a Defense Autonomous Warfare Group. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine, speaking at Vanderbilt University's Asness Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats in Nashville on April 23, 2026, described autonomous weapons as a key and essential part of everything the US military does. Caine said the joint force is doing a lot of thinking about applying autonomous technology to drones and command-and-control, and urged the Pentagon to normalize and become an early adopter of large language model use, noting that Pentagon staff lag behind ordinary users. Separately, the Defense Department had issued a supply-chain risk designation against Anthropic after the company declined to lift restrictions on domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons uses of its tools, though a federal judge blocked the resulting ban in late March 2026. President Trump indicated the company is shaping up and that tensions may be easing. The NSA has been granted access to Anthropic's Mythos Preview model.