Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military to develop plans for cutting 8 percent from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post and officials familiar with the matter - a striking proposal certain to face internal resistance and strident bipartisan opposition in Congress.
Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by Feb. 24, according to the memo, which is dated Tuesday and includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern U.S. border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense, and acquisition of submarines, one-way attack drones and other munitions.
The Pentagon budget for 2025 is about $850 billion, with broad consensus on Capitol Hill that extensive spending is necessary to deter threats posed by China and Russia, in particular. If adopted in full, the proposed cuts would include tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years.
Hegseth's budget directive follows a separate order from the Trump administration seeking lists of thousands of probationary Defense Department employees expected to be fired this week. That effort is being overseen by billionaire Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service and is part of his expansive dismantling of the federal bureaucracy.
Combined, the two efforts amount to a striking assault on the government's largest department, which has more than 900,000 civilian employees, many of them veterans. Probationary employment in the Defense Department can last from one to three years, depending on the position, and can include employees who have shifted from one job to another.
The Pentagon also oversees about 1.3 million active-duty service members and nearly 800,000 more who are in the National Guard and Reserve, but for now at least the Trump administration has exempted service members from its sweeping budget cuts.
Hegseth, in his Tuesday memo, sought to cast the proposed cuts as an extension of Trump's "peace through strength" policies, despite a reversal from the president's past practice of expanding military spending and touting those efforts. Republicans, including Hegseth, have spent years criticizing Democrats for not spending enough on national defense.
"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."
John Ullyot, a spokesman for Hegseth, said the Pentagon would soon have a response to questions about the secretary's directive.
The proposed cuts, if adopted, would mark the largest effort to rein in Pentagon spending since 2013, when congressionally mandated budget reductions known as sequestration took effect. Those cuts were perceived as a crisis in the Pentagon at the time, and grew increasingly unpopular with Republicans and Democrats alike as their effects on the military's ability to train and be ready for war became clear.
The memo, first reported on by The Washington Post, was labeled "CUI" - controlled unclassified information. It was sent to senior Pentagon officials, top military commanders, and the directors of numerous defense agencies. Bloomberg reported Friday about Hegseth's intended cuts, before the memo was distributed to Pentagon officials.