The U.S. military is launching a new autonomous warfare command to deploy cutting-edge unmanned systems across Latin America, a first-of-its-kind move by a combatant command. U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, commander Gen. Francis Donovan said Tuesday he ordered the creation of the SOUTHCOM Autonomous Warfare Command to support national security priorities and regional efforts.
Who Gets the Hardware
Donovan said, “From the seafloor to space and across the cyber domain, we fully intend to leverage the clear superiority of the American defense ecosystem by deploying cutting-edge innovation and working ever closer with our enduring partners in the region to outmatch those who threaten our collective peace and security.” That is the language of an apparatus that sees the hemisphere as a testing ground, with “clear superiority” and “cutting-edge innovation” presented as the justification for more machines, more surveillance, and more command over people far from the decision-makers.
SOUTHCOM said the new command will employ “autonomous, semi-autonomous, and unmanned platforms and systems to counter threats and challenges across domains, linking tactical missions to long-term strategic effects.” The phrase is bureaucratic armor for a project built to extend military reach without putting the people who order it anywhere near the consequences.
Who Pays for “Regional Stability”
SAWC will also work with U.S. allies in the region and advance missions including targeting narcoterrorist and cartel networks and responding to large-scale natural disasters. Donovan said the region is well-suited for innovation and collaboration with partners. He said, “Our geographic area of responsibility has a wide range of conditions, varied terrain, and diverse operational environments that make it an ideal setting in which to innovate. It is also a region with very capable and committed security partners who lean forward, embrace technologies and are very eager to work collaboratively with us to support regional stability in new and effective ways.”
The people living inside that “area of responsibility” are the ones who will live with the consequences of this new command. The military’s own framing makes clear that Latin America is being treated as a zone for experimentation, partnership, and control, with “stability” defined from above by the same institutions that deploy force.
SOUTHCOM is responsible for military operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean, including counter-narcotics missions aimed at disrupting drug trafficking networks that threaten U.S. interests. The U.S. military has carried out dozens of strikes in recent months on suspected drug-smuggling vessels as part of a broader campaign to dismantle cartel-linked trafficking operations.
What They Call Innovation
In a written posture statement to Congress earlier this year, Donovan said he aimed to leverage emerging technologies, telling lawmakers he intended “to capitalize on next generation capabilities like unmanned platforms, AI integration, and commercial tools to better enable us and our partners to counter … threats together.” In March, Donovan told an Armed Services Committee member he aimed to build cost-effective, modernized forces for SOUTHCOM’s mission, including autonomous systems and human-machine teaming, “to greatly increase lethality, all-domain awareness, and data sharing for U.S. and partner forces.”
That is the reform pitch of the war machine: cheaper, faster, more connected, more lethal. The language of “commercial tools,” “AI integration,” and “human-machine teaming” dresses up militarized control as modernization while the command’s mission remains the same — projecting force across borders in the name of U.S. interests.
SOUTHCOM said it will work with the military services and the War Department’s Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, or DAWG, to identify capabilities needed for the new command to begin operations and integrate into its mission. The new command is being built through the same institutional pipeline that produced the rest of the military apparatus, now with unmanned systems pushed deeper into the region under the banner of security and partnership.