"WASHINGTON -- In a bid to get ahead of what could be drastic cuts by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, some parts of the military are preparing lists of weapons they have long wanted to cancel but couldn't get past lawmakers seeking to protect spending in their districts.
DOGE members were expected at the Defense Department as soon as Friday, defense officials said. The Pentagon has received a list of DOGE officials assigned to the department but hasn't publicly released it, they added.
"We welcome DOGE to the Pentagon," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said earlier this past week.
In the weeks since President Trump took office, DOGE staffers have been embedded at several federal agencies, reviewing government systems to look for excessive spending. Trump signed an executive order Tuesday giving DOGE more authority to reduce the size of the federal workforce.
But DOGE has yet to tackle a budget as large and complex as the Defense Department's. The department employs three million troops and civilians and has a budget in excess of $800 billion, accounting for at least 12% of the $6.75 trillion federal budget.
Military spending on bases as well as money for weapons systems, ships and vehicles are the cornerstone of local economies around the country, and often large military weapons are built across several states. For example, construction of the F-35 touches 48 states.
DOGE didn't respond to a request for comment.
Some military services have already drawn up their own wish lists of cuts. "People are offering up things sacrificially, hoping that will prevent more cuts," one defense official said.
The Army list includes outdated drones and vehicles that have been produced in surplus and, if cut, could add up to billions of dollars in savings.
"We're taking a proactive approach to making our spending more efficient," said Col. Dave Butler, an Army spokesman. "There are several systems that we know won't survive on the modern battlefield."
The U.S. Navy is proposing cuts to its frigates and littoral combat ships, people familiar with the plans said.
The Air Force declined to comment on any proposed cuts, but Musk in the past has taken aim at the service's F-35 stealth jet fighters.
In the past, the services put forth lists of potential cuts in a bid to shift funding toward newer programs they wanted to fund instead. Such lists were often regarded as a political ploy meant to suggest the services were underfunded.
Lawmakers who sought to preserve military spending in their districts would then routinely reject those proposed cuts. The result has been a steadily growing Pentagon budget since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"It was in the permissive post-9/11 environment that we saw a whole slew of ill-conceived weapons programs," said Dan Grazier, senior fellow and director of the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center, a Washington nonprofit. "Now we are seeing the results -- failed program after failed program."
But with DOGE promising to make major cuts, some services are revamping the list to get ahead of the process.
"They want to inoculate themselves. The services are looking at this as an opportunity to get rid of things they couldn't before because of constituencies," said Bryan Clark, senior fellow at Hudson Institute, who closely tracks the U.S. Navy budget.
There is room for major cost savings without dramatically affecting the department because it is so big, Clark said, but until now cuts came at a political cost.
"You are going to upset a lot of companies who have built their business around government funding, and the new administration is not worried about the reaction it will get from the Hill," he said.
Defense spending has been cut in the past, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, the U.S. sought to shrink or close military bases, but the costs of doing so were far higher than expected in the short term and devastated some local economies.
Because much of what the Pentagon operates is on classified systems and accessing them requires security clearances, navigating defense systems may also prove difficult.
"There are classified systems in the Pentagon that others do not have, and they are classified at different levels, and so some of those are going to be much more difficult and much more sensitive to oversight for someone that may not have an appropriate classification," said Sen. Mike Rounds (R., S.D.), who supports Musk's efforts.
Critics of DOGE's effort are also likely to flag that Musk has billions of dollars of Pentagon contracts through his companies such as SpaceX and its Starlink system, raising potential conflicts of interest.
Democratic lawmakers have already expressed concern, saying that there should be greater oversight over members of DOGE.
"The White House should be enforcing the law and making sure he's not in conflict," Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) said, of Musk." [1]
1. U.S. News: Pentagon Prepares Potential Rollbacks Ahead of DOGE. Youssef, Nancy A; Wise, Lindsay. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 15 Feb 2025: A2.
Komentarų nėra:
Rašyti komentarą