Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly asked Pentagon officials Tuesday to draw up plans to slash defense spending for each of the next five years — as the department became the latest target of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) cost-cutting mission.
Hegseth, 44, demanded a proposal that would include annual 8% cuts to the Pentagon’s roughly $850 billion budget, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post.
The defense secretary ordered senior Pentagon officials, top military commanders, and the directors of several defense agencies to draft plans for the proposed cuts by Feb. 24.
Hegseth’s memo contained a list of 17 categories of spending that the Trump administration wants to be exempted from cuts, according to the outlet, including US-Mexico border operations, modernization of nuclear weapons, missile defense, submarine acquisition, one-way attack drones and other munitions.
“The time for preparation is over — we must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and reestablish deterrence,” Hegseth wrote in the memo. “Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit.”
It’s unclear what categories of Pentagon spending could be targeted by the potential cuts — which would amount to a roughly $68 billion annual reduction in military spending — as the Washington Post did not publish the full Hegseth memo.
The Pentagon and White House did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
Last week, President Trump floated the idea of cutting the Pentagon’s budget “in half” when geopolitical tensions start to cool, which he expects to happen during his term.
“At some point, when things settle down, I’m going to meet with China and I’m going to meet with Russia, in particular those two, and I’m going to say there’s no reason for us to be spending almost $1 trillion on the military,” Trump said.
“When we straighten it all out, then one of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi [Jinping] of China and President [Vladimir] Putin of Russia, and I want to say let’s cut our military budget in half. And we can do that, and I think we’ll be able to do that,” the president added.
In contrast, Vice President JD Vance acknowledged in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week that the Trump administration must “spend more” on defense.
“[T]he administration knows that we have to spend more on defense. We have to spend more on our military. We have to rise to meet the challenges of the 21st century,” Vance told the outlet.
“We also have to spend smarter. And this is something that people often miss,” the veep added. “This is not just about spending more money. This is also about changing our procurement process, changing our industrial base, and actually preparing ourselves with the weapons of the future so that we can fight, God forbid, the war of the future if we have to.”
Hegseth’s memo also comes just days after DOGE celebrated a “great kickoff” with the Department of Defense, signaling that the budgeting team is ready to pore over the Pentagon’s books.
“Let’s get to work,” Hegseth wrote on X earlier this, after the DOGE “kickoff” announcement, adding, “DOGE the waste; Double-Down on warriors.”
