(Bloomberg) — The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee slammed Pentagon plans to slash staffing at the office that oversees tests of major weapons systems, after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed the cuts would save the government $300 million.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island lamented the cuts to the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation as “reckless and damaging to military accountability and oversight.”
The office “has played a vital, legally mandated role in safeguarding the integrity of major defense programs and ensuring military systems are effective before they are put into warfighters’ hands,” Reed said in a statement after Hegseth announced the decision in a May 27 memo.
Hegseth framed the decision as a move that would save $300 million every year. In the memo, he said a “comprehensive internal review” had found redundant and non-essential work by the office, and ordered cuts that would see about half its staff, which currently totals more than 90 people, let go.
The Pentagon declined to release any information about the review or answer questions about how the $300 million figure was tabulated. The office’s direct budget was $170 million in fiscal year 2024 and $136 million in fiscal year 2025.
It was possible that the cuts would hit contractors hired by the department to do some of the office’s work. In his memo, Hegseth ordered an end to all “contractor personnel support supplying contracted employees” to the testing office within seven days. In the statement, the Pentagon said the office had “a couple hundred contractors.”
Hegseth has periodically posted social media videos touting cuts at the Pentagon and emphasizing how closely the agency is aligned with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. In a May 28 post, Hegseth wrote that “the important work from @DOGE continues at the pentagon.”
He said he had tapped Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg to work with DOGE & the military services to review all of the department’s consulting contracts.
“We need to replace wasteful spending in favor of a culture focused on — get this — actual financial responsibility and stewardship,” Hegseth said. He said the military service branches wanted the cuts to the testing office “in order to go faster with the capabilities that they need.”
But it was Feinberg who gave the testing office a vote of confidence during his nomination process back in February.
“If confirmed, I pledge to rigorously maintain DOT&E’s independence and ability to execute their mission because DoD decisions and warfighter optimization of their systems depend on DOT&E reports on weapon system performance,” Feinberg said in written answers to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Senator Elizabeth Warren had warned earlier that the move “is threatening the lives of our service members and hurting our national security.” Most recently, the test office disputed an Army claim that its long-delayed hypersonic weapon would be ready for fielding by Sept. 30. And it has consistently provided unvarnished assessments of the F-35 jet’s underwhelming mission readiness and chronic reliability and software shortcomings.
“Stripping DOT&E of its own pilots, test equipment, and independent staffing doesn’t return it to its ‘core mission’ — it guts it,” said Greg Williams, a spokesman for the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group.
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