It’s been more than a month since President Trump told the Department on Government Efficiency (DOGE) to take a close look at the Pentagon.
But before we evaluate how the review of the Pentagon has gone thus far, it’s important to note that the so-called efficiency drive is nothing of the sort. Wholesale destruction of agencies like the Agency for International Development, layoffs based on how long someone has served in government rather than how effective they are at their job or how important their function is, and threats to reduce popular benefit programs without providing verifiable evidence that there is waste that justifies substantial budget cuts that will hurt millions of people are not characteristics of a genuine efficiency drive.
Efficiency is a cover story for an ill-conceived across-the-board attack on government based on little or no analysis of what works and what doesn’t. It is impossible to implement a genuine efficiency drive when dramatic cuts are made within a matter of weeks – not nearly enough time to engage in thoughtful consideration of what can safely be cut and what is an essential function of government.
With that as background, we can look at what has been happening at the Pentagon. The announcement this week that the administration will seek to cut 60,000 civilian employees in the department has persuaded some that the efficiency drive at the Pentagon is real. But as large as it sounds, a 60,000 cut, if it is in fact implemented, represents less than 10% of the more than 700,000 civilians who work in the Department of Defense.
The proposed personnel cuts at the Pentagon are a far cry from what happened to agencies like AID, which had its work force almost completely eliminated, going from 10,000 employees to 300, or the Department of Education, which is slated for closure. And this doesn’t even account for the fact that the Pentagon employs over half a million people as contractors. While DOGE is reviewing contractors as well, there is no indication thus far that their numbers will go down significantly.
What is missing from DOGE’s recommendations about the Pentagon to date is anything that would significantly reduce the revenue of weapons contractors, despite the fact that a number of the systems they build are overpriced, underperforming and unnecessary for dealing with current challenges. And even items like the F-35 combat aircraft that have come under harsh criticism from Elon Musk, the power behind the DOGE, have only been criticized in the context that the funds freed up could be used to buy large quantities of additional drones, not to reduce the Pentagon’s topline budget.
A New York Times analysis found that only a couple of major contractors have had reductions in contract revenue as a result of actions by the DOGE, with General Dynamics suffering a loss of less than one percent and Leidos suffering a 7% loss.
Even if the Trump administration were engaged in a genuine efficiency drive, it would not be getting to the heart of the matter. America has built a war machine that is hugely expensive, but has not prevailed in a conflict in this century – not because of any failure on the part of members of the armed forces, but because of unrealistic expectations of what military force can achieve – like regime change that leads to stable democratic allies versus problematic governments that have done more to sow division and enable extremist groups than they have to provide security and stability in their nations or regions. If one takes a broad definition of waste, the $8 trillion that the Costs of War project at Brown University calculates that America has spent on its post-9/11 wars has largely been wasted.
A genuinely efficient military would be more selective about what conflicts to engage in, more realistic about what force can and cannot accomplish, and more willing to engage in serious diplomacy before intervening militarily in a conflict overseas. Such a military could be smaller, better trained, an armed with simpler, more reliable weapons that can be more easily maintained and replaced than current high tech systems. By all means let’s push the DOGE to cut unnecessary systems within the Pentagon budget, but let’s not lose sight of what is really needed – a new, more realistic military strategy paired with an effort to reduce the role of special interests in shaping our budgets and our foreign policy.
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