Owen West

Is that a word? Is that a term? He announced the formation of a new four-star combatant command focused on autonomous warfare like drones and defense robotics.

The Autonomous Warfare Command, or Auto War Com, will be led by someone named Owen West, a former Marine, who is now the Director of the Defense Innovation Unit, and Max Strasser, who is a Navy SEAL Senior Chief.

I think their job is just to get this thing passed through the Hill so it can make it legal.

I think that's what they're getting paid to do.

Those types of missions, I wouldn't say that we're at the point where those can be conducted by uncrewed aircraft, but we're certainly getting there.

And I think, you know, if you look at DIU's three priorities that Owen West laid out when he started the job earlier this year.

Number one was deliver overmatch capability.

Number two was deliver unmanned capabilities that keep our warfighters farther away from the fight.

And so...

And so I think, you know, someone who worked closely under Bill Perry, you know, when Ash Carter started the Defense Innovation Unit and now the scaling that this administration has done, you know, just great work that Owen West and his team have done by really expanding a model of, of going in and attracting the best talent across America, of bringing folks in that had not considered about work, considered working in defense previously.

And this has happened in not just in, in new tech, but I think that, you know, in some of the instances more interesting, even in, in just broader, you know, some could say like mundane industrial base areas, whether it's, it's the raw materials or it's, or it's some type of a machining capability.

So I think from an appropriations perspective, there were some great things that were set in motion by Ken Calvert in closing the valley of death, right, of adding procurement funding so that we were not incessantly – funding prototypes, but eventually saying, America needs to produce.