It’s just breaking that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered big cuts in the defense budget over the next five years and he wants he proposals for these cuts on his desk by Monday.
The Washington Post says these cuts would amount to “tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years.”
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 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 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.
The memo calls for continued “support agency” funding for several major regional headquarters, including Indo-Pacific Command, Northern Command and Space Command. Notably absent from that list is European Command, which has had a leading role in executing U.S. strategy during the war in Ukraine; Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East; and Africa Command, which manages the several thousand troops the Pentagon has spread across that continent.
“President Trump’s charge to DoD is clear: achieve Peace through Strength,” Hegseth wrote in the memo, dated Tuesday. “The time for preparation is over — we must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and reestablish deterrence. 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.
It’s amazing to see an administration that actually takes cost-cutting seriously. And I don’t think for a second that Hegseth would do anything to hurt the military or the necessary actions it does around the world. He’s totally got the military’s back.