The U.S. Department of Defense has quietly accelerated deployment of autonomous AI systems across cyber warfare, intelligence analysis, and targeting operations, even as Congress maintains statutory requirements that humans retain meaningful control over lethal decisions. Recent procurement documents and testimony from defense analysts reveal a structural mismatch: military operational timelines—measured in milliseconds for cyber defense and seconds for drone engagement decisions—are fundamentally incompatible with the human decision-making loops that policy requires. Dr. Nate Schimmoller, a defense AI researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted in congressional briefings that "the technical reality of modern warfare makes human-in-the-loop a procedural checkbox rather than an operational safeguard." The Pentagon has justified this acceleration citing peer competition with China and Russia, both advancing autonomous military AI without comparable restrictions. Yet this creates a policy vacuum where systems field faster than oversight mechanisms can meaningfully function.