A senior Senate Democrat is pressing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for answers about how the Pentagon plans to safely rewrite its foundational autonomous weapons policy on an aggressive 90-day deadline, after President Trump signed a sweeping directive last week that rescinds Biden-era AI oversight requirements. Defense Scoop first reported that Senator Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) sent a letter to Hegseth on June 12, 2026, raising pointed questions about whether the accelerated timeline leaves adequate room to prevent friendly-fire incidents and civilian casualties before the new policy takes effect.
The pressure stems from National Security Presidential Memorandum 11 (NSPM-11), which President Trump signed on June 5, 2026. The memorandum directs the Pentagon to revise DoD Directive 3000.09 — the policy document that has governed the development and use of lethal autonomous weapons systems — within 90 days and to conduct annual reviews of that policy going forward. NSPM-11 also formally rescinds National Security Memorandum-25, the Biden administration directive that had imposed more cautious guardrails on artificial intelligence in national security contexts. The clear intent of the new memorandum is to accelerate AI adoption across the U.S. national security apparatus, removing what the Trump administration regards as bureaucratic friction that could leave the United States trailing strategic competitors.
What Gallego Is Asking
Senator Gallego letter zeroes in on a tension at the heart of NSPM-11: the same speed that the administration wants for AI adoption is precisely what makes safety advocates nervous. Gallego asked specifically whether the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group — the Pentagon office led by Lt. Gen. Stephen Marks — has dedicated personnel assigned to civilian harm mitigation and response analysis. The concern is not abstract. Autonomous or semi-autonomous weapons systems that misidentify targets can cause mass-casualty events, and the existing DoD Directive 3000.09 was crafted precisely to require human judgment at key decision points in lethal engagements.
By compressing the rewrite of that directive into 90 days while simultaneously eliminating the Biden-era oversight framework that underpinned it, NSPM-11 creates a window during which the policy undergoes fundamental change but the safeguards that shaped the previous policy are gone. Gallego set a response deadline of June 26, 2026, giving the Pentagon two weeks to explain how it intends to manage those risks during the transition period and beyond.
The Defense Autonomous Warfare Group sits at the center of this debate. Lt. Gen. Marks organization is responsible for coordinating the Pentagon expanding autonomous systems programs, but Gallego letter suggests the senator is not confident the office has sufficient civilian harm mitigation capacity to handle both the policy rewrite and ongoing program oversight simultaneously. The senator has not opposed autonomous weapons development outright; the letter is focused on process and personnel adequacy rather than a broader rejection of AI in defense.
The Scope of NSPM-11
The autonomous weapons directive revision is only one piece of NSPM-11. The memorandum sets out a sweeping to-do list for the national security community across a 90-to-120-day window. In addition to the DoD Directive 3000.09 rewrite, NSPM-11 requires AI governance policy updates, a classified annex addressing sensitive applications, roadmaps for computing resources, and the establishment of an AI National Security Strategic Reserve — a pool of non-governmental talent that federal agencies can draw on for AI-related missions.
More than a dozen departments and agencies are named in the memorandum as participants in this broader AI governance overhaul, including the State Department, Treasury Department, Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, among others. The breadth of the directive signals that the administration views AI adoption as a whole-of-government national security priority, not a task confined to the military services.
The rescission of National Security Memorandum-25 is symbolically significant alongside those concrete requirements. NSM-25 represented the Biden administration attempt to build a cautious framework around AI in high-stakes applications, one that emphasized interagency review and risk assessment before deployment. Its elimination signals that the current administration regards those review processes as obstacles to speed rather than as necessary safeguards.
What It Means for Contractors
Defense contractors working in autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and unmanned platforms should treat NSPM-11 as both an opportunity and a compliance inflection point. The 90-day deadline for revising DoD Directive 3000.09 means that contracting vehicles, program requirements, and technical standards tied to the current directive will likely shift before the end of summer 2026. Companies that have built products or compliance frameworks around the existing directive should begin reviewing those frameworks now, because the policy baseline they were written against is about to change.
The creation of an AI National Security Strategic Reserve is a direct market signal for firms that offer specialized AI talent on a project or contract basis. The reserve is explicitly described as drawing on non-governmental expertise, which positions consulting firms, staffing organizations, and AI-focused defense contractors as potential contributors. Early engagement with the agencies named in NSPM-11 — particularly DHS, DNI, and the intelligence community — could yield positioning advantages as those agencies work to satisfy the memorandum requirements on deadline.
Contractors should also monitor the outcome of Senator Gallego inquiry closely. If the Pentagon June 26 response reveals gaps in civilian harm mitigation staffing or process, Congress may move to attach conditions to defense appropriations or authorization bills that affect autonomous systems programs. Any such conditions would cascade directly into program requirements and contract terms. The intersection of executive acceleration and legislative caution that this moment represents is exactly the kind of policy turbulence that reshapes procurement landscapes, and companies that anticipate the outcome will be better positioned than those that wait for final policy to land.
The 90-day clock on DoD Directive 3000.09 expires in early September 2026. Between now and then, the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group will be under sustained pressure to produce a new policy framework while simultaneously responding to congressional oversight — a dual burden that makes stakeholder engagement and public comment processes more important, not less, for contractors and other interested parties who want to shape the outcome. The policy revision will also need to address how autonomous systems testing and evaluation standards align with the broader NSPM-11 framework for AI assurance across the national security community.
