Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is rushing to reshape the military, in part by shifting money and making cuts.
He has banned efforts in the Defense Department to promote diversity, and strongly backed President Trump’s decision to fire Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He has welcomed Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to review Pentagon programs for what he calls “fraud, waste and abuse.”
Mr. Hegseth has also ordered senior military and Defense Department officials to draw up proposals to reallocate $50 billion in this year’s budget, or about 8 percent. The Pentagon would go through this process annually for the next five years.
In addition, the Pentagon has said it would fire 5,400 civilian probationary workers, in the first of what officials say is likely to be a wave of much larger layoffs at the government’s biggest agency.
Whether the department can cut or shift money internally without congressional approval is among the questions Pentagon leaders may face.
At the same time, Republican lawmakers are aiming to add more than $100 billion to the Pentagon’s proposed budget this year, which would push total military spending close to $1 trillion annually.
So which programs will be cut?
That’s the big question.
In addition to cutting programs dealing with diversity, climate change and whatever else Mr. Musk’s team recommends, Mr. Hegseth is expected to review proposals from the armed services in the next few weeks.
The Army, for instance, was expected to propose cutting outdated drones and surplus vehicles. Mr. Hegseth insists these are not cuts, but rather “refocusing and reinvesting existing funds” into other areas.
Any cuts to the defense budget may face opposition in Congress, where lawmakers often focus on changes that could affect their districts.
Firing as many as 55,000 probationary employees would also yield savings.
“Bottom line, it is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission critical,” Mr. Hegseth said in a video statement last week.
Which areas would receive reallocated money?
Mr. Hegseth has exempted 17 categories from the cuts. These categories are likely to be on the receiving end of new funds, according to defense officials, who say they are still trying to figure out how to carry out Mr. Hegseth’s order.
Robert G. Salesses, the acting deputy defense secretary, said in a statement that some of the money could go to an “Iron Dome for America” — a missile defense system. Israel has a mobile Iron Dome defense system, but a U.S. version is unlikely to resemble it, since the United States is obviously much, much larger, in terms of land mass.
Funding could be increased for other Trump administration defense priorities, including military operations at the southern border, the modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense, and the acquisition of submarines and one-way attack drones.
One-way attack drones?
One-way attack drones are small, unmanned propeller-driven aircraft that explode on impact.
They have been on the Pentagon’s wish list since Defense Department officials noticed the Ukrainian military’s success in using them against Russian troops. In fact, some U.S. military procurement officers have been looking into buying inexpensive commercial off-the-shelf drones.
Last fall, an innovative unit of the Defense Department turned to industry for the drones, seeking those that could operate in “disrupted, disconnected, intermittent, low-bandwidth” environments.
What else could get more money?
Mr. Hegseth’s list of 17 offsets also includes going after Mexican drug cartels, or “combating transnational criminal organizations in the Western Hemisphere,” as the Pentagon puts it.
Military intelligence officers may soon be heading to the southern border to try to infiltrate drug cartels that have been trafficking fentanyl into the United States, Defense Department officials say.
The U.S. government has already been going after drug cartels. The Trump administration, however, has raised the possibility of military strikes on Mexican territory.
Mr. Trump signed an executive order that said the United States would “ensure the total elimination” of the groups.
Also on Mr. Hegseth’s “good” list are categories that the defense secretary called “priority critical cybersecurity,” “munitions and energetics organic industrial bases” and, of course, “audit.”
Mr. Hegseth has promised to ensure the Defense Department could pass a clean audit by the end of the Trump administration — something it has failed to do since conducting annual audits in 2018.
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