Hegseth touts $580M in Pentagon cuts

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday announced the Pentagon is canceling more than $580 million in grants and contracts deemed “wasteful spending.”

In a new memo, Hegseth asserts the programs are “inconsistent with the priorities" of the department and don’t align with President Trump’s priorities. The cuts are part of the Trump administration’s work with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is currently auditing federal departments.

“Today, I’m signing a memo directing the termination of over $580 million in DOD contracts and grants that do not match the priorities of this president or this department. In other words, they are not a good use of taxpayer dollars,” Hegseth said in a video posted to the social platform X. 

Among the cancellations were “an HR software effort” known as the Defense Civilian Human Resources Management System (DCHRMS), which was originally meant to take one year and cost $36 million but instead is eight years into its contract and $280 million over budget, Hegseth said in the video. 

DCHRMS was intended to streamline a significant portion of the Pentagon’s legacy human resources information technology, but still has at least two more years of development and testing before it can be operated, according to the memo.

“Further investment in the DCHRMS project would be throwing more good taxpayer money after bad,” Hegseth writes, noting that he has directed the development of a new plan within two months for the effort. 

Other slashed grants worth a combined $360 million include those that fund research efforts and other activities in areas of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and related social programs, climate change, social science, Covid-19 pandemic response and other areas “not aligned" with Defense Department priorities.

Those efforts include a $6 million move to decarbonize emissions of Navy ships, $5.2 million to diversify the Navy and $9 million to create “equitable” artificial intelligence.

“I need lethal machine learning models, not equitable machine learning models," Hegseth said.

The Pentagon also is cutting another $30 million worth of contracts with consulting firms.

The Trump administration, using DOGE, has aimed to reduce expenditures within federal government agencies and slash the civil servant workforce. 

Defense officials in early March said the department, in working with DOGE, had found some $80 million in what it deemed wasteful spending largely devoted to DEI programs and climate change research, promising the actions were “just the start,” with more cuts to come.

And the Pentagon is seeking to cut 5 to 8 percent of its civilian employees over the next several months — some 50,000 to 60,000 jobs.

With the latest announcement of cuts, Hegseth said the total money saved by the department is $800 million since Feb. 20.

Critics, however, have said the alleged savings have been grossly overblown, with withheld or inaccurate data on DOGE’s digital “wall of receipts.”