Former defense officials have cautious optimism about Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) trimming the military into a leaner fighting force as long as the task force has learned from recent hiccups while pursuing its agenda.
Newsweek has reached out to the Pentagon for comment by email on Friday afternoon.
Why It Matters
DOGE has taken a “chainsaw” to the federal government as Musk and his unofficial agency seek to greatly reduce the size and scope of the federal government. During a video appearance at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, Musk said that the Trump administration will “need to delete entire agencies.”
The administration, meanwhile, has faced pushback on its aggressive agenda mainly through legal challenges that have played out in the courts over the past few weeks.
Cuts have already hit the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which a judge on Friday ruled was not protected despite concerns about staffers stationed overseas as part of their missions in dangerous countries and environs.
The Pentagon has felt the first touches of the administration’s shakeup after President Donald Trump fired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles “CQ” Brown, a four-star U.S. Air Force general, and nominated retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine to replace him. Trump argued that Caine was “passed over for promotion” by former President Joe Biden.
What To Know
Newsweek spoke with two former defense department officials—James Anderson, the Acting Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy during the first Trump administration, and Jerry McGinn, senior career official in the Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy. Both believed that DOGE can prove highly beneficial for the Pentagon as long as it dropped its hack-and-slash approach.
“There’s potential for considerable damage if they’re [cuts] done thoughtlessly, if that meat cleaver is swung in a wild fashion,” Anderson said. “There’s a lot of damage that can be done, but, on the other hand, if it’s a strategy-driven exercise, then the cuts could be very effective in helping reallocate and reprioritize the defense budget to make the U.S. military both leaner and meaner.”
In a press release issued February 21, the Department of Defense announced it would re-evaluate its probationary workforce, “consistent with the President’s initiative to reform the federal workforce to maximize efficiency and productivity.”
The department anticipates a 5 to 8 percent reduction in the civilian workforce, and around 5,400 probationary workers released beginning the week starting February 24. This will be followed by a hiring freeze while the department conducts “a further analysis of our personnel needs, complying as always with all applicable laws.”
Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images
Anderson suggested that the force might benefit from a reduction as “newer technologies” allow for the force to reduce numbers anyway, and that through reducing the force, the military can stress test and determine whether more processes and functions could be automated “in ways that haven’t been done before.”
“That’s where I think Musk can probably bring some real value,” Anderson said.
However, Congress has provisionally approved a $150 billion increase in the military budget going into 2025, raising questions as to whether these personnel cuts can truly achieve the reduction in spending that the Trump administration aims to achieve.
Anderson said that while personnel cuts have been the most immediate and upfront cost that the administration has targeted, he would expect to see DOGE address the “four major buckets of defense spending”: research and development, operations and maintenance, personnel costs, and weapons.
“If it’s not structural and it’s not sustained, it will not last,” he said. “Then all the vested interests, the waste, fraud and abuse, will creep back, so that’s where creative thinking by Musk and his team can potentially be very helpful. But they have to work with the department, they have to work with Capitol Hill, and they have to think about the long game, not just immediate cuts.”
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
McGinn, who now heads up George Mason University’s Baroni Center for Government Contracting, said that because of the size of the defense budget, which will hit around $1 billion if the provisional budget is approved, “there are lots of ways to find deficiencies,” but stressed the need to ensure that cuts do not “impact the readiness of the force and delivery capabilities, but that’s not really the intent.”
“The intent of [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth is to make the force more lethal,” McGinn said while admitting that “there are concerns about impacts on existing programs, federal positions and the like.”
McGinn opposed widespread cuts to probationary employees, saying there must be a “methodical and thoughtful” look at “the functions that those probationary employees do before they take any action.”
“DOGE in and of itself can’t make those decisions,” he said. “They can recommend, but it’s ultimately going to be the Secretary’s decision on personnel. They’ll have to be very intentional and thoughtful about it.”
McGinn added: “Given the focus on maintaining lethality of the force and given the recent experiences with the Department of Energy, I would expect that they’ll move deliberately before they make an announcement.”
When it comes to cutting contracts for weapons manufacturers, McGinn said “the vast majority of contracts you could terminate at any time, called a termination for convenience…under the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the government can cancel just about any contract at any time for any reason.”
“The stakes of a contract vary tremendously, so that’s where a lot of companies … they know that contracts can be ended at any time, and that leads to impacts, depending on the type of contract,” he said. “So actually, the government has great leverage on terminating contracts.”
What Happens Next?
The Pentagon will continue its review of probationary officers before making the cuts that Musk and DOGE have looked to achieve, but the turnover of top military officers will likely continue.
On Saturday, the Trump administration replaced the head of the U.S. Navy, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead naval operations and first woman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
