{"id":8912,"date":"2026-02-18T21:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/spacex-military-contract-drone-swarms\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T21:01:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:01:00","slug":"spacex-military-contract-drone-swarms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/spacex-military-contract-drone-swarms\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX Angling for Military Contract to Produce Drone Swarms"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2017, Elon Musk signed an open letter<\/a> calling on the United Nations to ban the development of autonomous weapons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not have long to act,\u201d the letter read. \u201cOnce this Pandora\u2019s box is opened, it will be hard to close.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2018, he signed a pledge<\/a> by the Future of Life Institute, agreeing that \u201cthe decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine\u201d and that \u201cwe will neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the draw of big government contracts to do exactly what he opposed back then has seemingly become too lucrative to remain ethically consistent. As Bloomberg<\/em> reports<\/a>, SpaceX and xAI, the latter of which was recently folded into the former, are now competing in a Pentagon contest to produce voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarming tech.<\/p>\n

Inside sources told Bloomberg<\/em> that the Pentagon\u2019s contest has a $100 million prize and was launched last month. The goal is to develop a drone swarm that can respond to voice commands simultaneously. <\/p>\n

However, considering the current state of large language models, which continue to be plagued by hallucinations, it\u2019s no wonder experts have voiced concerns about using generative AI to command lethal drones. <\/p>\n

While coordinated movement of drones is already well-established tech, having a whole network of drones move autonomously at once in pursuit of a target has proven extremely difficult on the battlefield, per Bloomberg<\/em>\u2018s sources.<\/p>\n

The effort is part of the Trump administration\u2019s Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG), <\/strong>and the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon\u2019s arm dedicated to tapping Silicon Valley for cutting-edge tech.<\/p>\n

The goal is to progressively develop the concept from software to real-life testing across five separate phases.<\/p>\n

According to Bloomberg<\/em>\u2018s sources, the drones won\u2019t just be used for reconnaissance, implying they will also serve offensive purposes. The human-machine interaction \u201cwill directly impact the lethality and effectiveness of these systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a considerable departure for SpaceX, which has previously inked government contracts for access to space and military satellites, but not weapons systems.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s xAI signed a $200 million contract with the US military for the use of its Grok chatbot and has been looking to hire engineers<\/a> with security clearance.<\/p>\n

The news comes ahead of a rumored SpaceX IPO at a record-crushing valuation of $1.25 trillion. How investors will react to Musk reversing his stance on the use of autonomous weapons systems remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

Musk claimed earlier this month<\/a> that SpaceX would \u201cform the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world\u2019s foremost real-time information and free speech platform,\u201d following the company\u2019s merger with xAI.<\/p>\n

The CEO, however, made no mention of his companies\u2019 efforts to develop drone swarms.<\/p>\n

More on xAI:<\/strong> Cofounders Fleeing Elon Musk\u2019s xAI<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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The post SpaceX Angling for Military Contract to Produce Drone Swarms<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2017, Elon Musk signed an open letter calling on the United Nations to ban the development of autonomous weapons. \u201cWe do not have long to act,\u201d the letter read.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,178,3842,3845,1521,5212,3936,187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-elon-musk","category-future-society","category-robots-and-machines","category-space","category-spacex","category-the-industrialists","category-xai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}