With Elon Musk’s cost cuts, military leaders have bloated contracts, programs and legacy weapons systems in mind.
From David JeansForbes Staff
DOGE comes for the Ministry of Defense.
After employees of the Department of Government Efficiency brought the knife to a growing list of federal authorities in the approaching days and caused widespread panic in other days. Forbes. Calculated to link 2 trillion dollars from the federal budgetPresent They could bring an unprecedented shock America’s extensive military and its budget of virtually 1 trillion dollar.
Legislators have had problems on each side of the aisle for a long time Wasteful defense spending With little success, because the Pentagon was repeatedly brought into embarrassment by reports on outrageous expenditure – hundreds of thousands in Unknown inventoryPresent Failed auditsPresent The notorious 10,000 dollar toilet seats. In interview During the Super Bowl on Sunday, President Trump said that he would expect Doges to examine the military “hundreds of billions of dollars and abuse”.
Now, even when Elon Musk’s cost cutting machine Assembly judicial challenges and Threats Democrats, Minister of Defense Pete Hegseth, explain the welcome mat. “I was in contact with Elon Musk, who is a great patriot who is interested in promoting America’s first agenda,” he said Fox news Tuesday. “There are many places where we want the spicy eye of the Doge, but we will do it in coordination.”
Hegseth said that he would consider cuts in weapon acquisitions and procurement, climate protection programs and headquarters on the headquarters. The Doge Ministry of Defense is employed directly by the Ministry of Defense so as to concentrate exclusively on the execution of their cost cutting mandate, said one person with direct knowledge.
“We see how the chicken gets home to strain.”
Before your arrival, Pentagon leaders have already began to focus on Legacy initiatives called After a dozen current and former Pentagon officials and others, the F-35 program “outdated” with knowledge with which a dozen current and former Pentagon officials and others with whom he spoke, and merge various operations Forbes.
“The existing ecosystem of the main entrepreneurs and personalities of the old cold war knew what came, and decided to ignore it” the Trump administration. “And we see how the chicken gets home to strain.”
On the one hand, the Air Force is exposed to a big change since it hopes to defend the longer term of mannered aircraft within the rise of drone war leadership. Hegseth last week scroll Planning of meetings for a restructuring that included China’s higher combating, including plans for a sixth generation fighter plane. All cuts of this system would only introduce uncertainty in regards to the future manned battle capabilities of the Air Force two weeks later The service gave General Electric and Pratt & Whitney billions to proceed to develop recent engines for the proposed jet.
The Pentagon and the White House, which monitored communication for Doge, rejected a press release. The Air Force didn’t reply to inquiries about comments.
Do you could have a tip? Contact David Jeans at djeans@forbes.com or 347-559-5443 under Signal.
According to a few sources, Pentagon executives are also concentrating on the merger of three organizations that consider the incubation of recent technologies: the defense innovation Unit (DIU), the highest digital and artificial intelligence office (CDAO) and the office for strategic skills. Several sources said on this step the move of the digital defense service could happen, a program that’s committed to the technical talent of the private sector and has currently supervised by the CDAO.
“Bringing these organizations together offers a rare opportunity to align innovation efforts with clear, uniform goals that can directly improve national security”, which has an annual budget of virtually 1 billion US dollars.
The way forward for the biggest program of the CDAO can be uncertain. According to a Pentagon official with direct knowledge, the officials this week kept an upcoming contract competition for one in every of the first AI platforms of the Pentagon platform for the choice of the Battlefield (Avana (A Mashup of Advanced Analytics)). The contractor Booz Allen was received in 2021 a contract of three.2 billion US dollars and a contract for Advana, but a discount that may be surrounded by it A ten-year contract of $ 15 billion Should make progress in the approaching months. Booz Allen rejected a press release.
Part of Hegseth’s strategy concerns the introduction of Silicon Valley. Last week he met Alexandr Wang, CEO of Ai Unicorn Scaleai, based on two individuals with knowledge of the meeting. Scale AI has contracts of no less than 300 million US dollars from the federal government to supply data identification services. (Scaleai refused to comment on the meeting.)
Wang also belonged to a bunch of top -tech managers of the Silicon Valley Defense company -including Anduril, Palantir, Openaai and Vannevar Labs, which took part in a top -class military summit last week. The event was organized by the Indopazacific command, which leads the US military armed forces within the region based on a listing of participants Forbes; Cloud Giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google were also present.
And no less than one tech manager joins the dod. Emil Michael, a former Uber manager, was chosen by Trump as Sub -State Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, where he monitors the famous agency for advanced research projects for defense, which is best often called DARPA, that a discretionary budget of 4 Billions of US technologies for war purchases. Trump announce his appointment said Michael would “ensure that our military has the technologically highly developed weapons of the world and at the same time saves a lot of money for our taxpayers”.
Despite the speech of giving up expensive gun systems in favor of cheap drones, Prime Contractors profit from a few of Hegseth’s great ticket items. For example Trump’s ‘Iron Dome’ A plan In order to construct a brand new rocket defense system to filter out threats resembling hyper-silence and cruise rocks, billions of dollars could direct Like corporations Lockheed Martin and RTX if it is possible. “We can now shoot cruise rockets with lasers, and that could be part of the solution,” Jim Taiclet, CEO von Lockheed said analysts Last week I added: “I welcome DOGE’s efforts and the efforts of the administration to reduce bureaucracy.”
Pentagon officials can expect other agencies after what is predicted from DOGES arrival. The initiative that publishes a rolling record of the plain costs Cutting measures on xhas claimed a credit for the termination of rental contracts that supervises the General Services Administration, deleted the identification of the genders on the web site of veteran affairs and received access to sensitive data within the US finance ministries. Musk allies were also installed in key positions in Technology Transformation Services, the IT arm of the Federal Government, and called for a very powerful access to administrator access Forbes reported.
Perhaps probably the most dramatic is the usID-controlled Implosion, the 70 billion dollar authority for foreign aids. Hegseth has aimed to calm the concerns in regards to the arrival of Doges in his department. “The Ministry of Defense is not a USA,” he said. “USASID has many problems … the persecution of more globalistic agents who have no connection to America at first.”
Jeremy Bogaisky has contributed to the reporting.
Update: This story has been updated to remove Shield Ai’s reference that take part in the AI ​​summit. The company’s managers didn’t participate within the event.
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