The Department of Defense is slashing more waste, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an update on Wednesday.
“When President Trump asked me to serve as the Secretary of Defense, he gave all of us and me the mission of restoring the warrior ethos, and we’re focused on that every single day,” Hegseth said in the video announcement, explaining that they are doing that by examining “what works at DOD and also what doesn’t work” and examining where they are spending taxpayer dollars.
Hegseth said they have discovered that the Defense Department has become “very much over reliant on management consultants and contractors,” noting that they “likely have more contractors than we have civilian employees.”
“And many of them, those contractors, are making more money than our career senior executive employees,” he said, giving on example:
To give you one example, the Air Force working as a team with DOGE cut that department’s largest management consulting program. This joint team conducted a line by line audit of over 50 contract vehicles, saving a billion dollars on the current program, a billion and canceling its $3.8 billion extension, which we all know inevitably would have been spent these combined with other reviews over the past two weeks have resulted in get this more than $5 billion in savings for the Department of Defense. Yes, 5 billion in addition to the over 5 billion we’ve already found in working with DOGE. So that brings the tally now to over $10 billion in real savings at the Department of Defense working with DOGE, and we’re just getting started.
So the review of consulting contracts, but on the grander scale, the DOD must focus on “actual financial responsibility and stewardship so that our limited funds are spent better on, you know, things like health care and mission related programs for our war fighters and their families,” Hegseth said.
As a result, Hegseth said that he is signing “three separate memos dealing with reforming the Pentagon, reducing bureaucracy and moving money toward the needs of our war fighters.”
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The first memo “responsibly reduces the number of management consultants and contractors,” he said, emphasizing these are not individuals who are front line fighters.
“Second, it lays out the second memo lays out needed reforms to the department’s usage of executive assistance. Think about proper ratios. And the third restructures the department’s operational and test Evaluation Office, which will make testing and fielding weapons more efficient so that war fighters get what they need faster,” Hegseth added, reaffirming that his department is committed to reducing government bloat and slashing wasteful spending “in favor of increased lethality.”
WATCH:
This update comes as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) savings comes to $175 billion, or $1,086.96 per taxpayer.
The DOD is listed as the 14th agency in order of which have generated the most savings.
