Hegseth Orders Pentagon to Draw Up Plans for Budget Cuts

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior military and Defense Department officials to draw up plans to cut 8 percent from the defense budget over each of the next five years, officials said on Wednesday.

Mr. Hegseth said in a memo issued on Tuesday that a number of branches within the military and the Pentagon should turn in budget-cutting proposals by next Monday, two officials said. The memo listed some 17 exceptions to the proposed cuts, including military operations at the southern border.

One senior official said the cuts appeared likely to be part of an effort to focus Pentagon money on programs that the Trump administration favors, instead of actually cutting the Defense Department’s $850 billion annual budget.

For example, the Pentagon is already spending more money on the Trump administration’s efforts at the southern border, including on military flights that have taken migrants in the United States to countries as far away as India.

Mr. Hegseth has vowed to use thousands of active-duty U.S. troops to help stem the flow of migrants across the border, a top priority for President Trump. But illegal crossings, which reached record levels during the Biden administration, slowed significantly before Mr. Trump took office last month.

In a statement on Wednesday, Robert G. Salesses, the acting deputy defense secretary, said the president’s “charge to the department is clear: to achieve peace through strength.”

He added that the Pentagon was undertaking the budget cuts with an aim of bolstering other priorities. “To achieve our mandate from President Trump,” he said, “we are guided by his priorities, including securing our borders, building the Iron Dome for America and ending radical and wasteful government D.E.I. programs and preferencing.”

In the memo issued on Tuesday, which Bloomberg reported earlier, Mr. Hegseth repeated a phrase he uses often about the need for the military to focus on “the warrior ethos.” He called for a rejection of “excessive bureaucracy” and unnecessary spending.

Any cuts to the defense budget may face opposition in Congress, where lawmakers often focus on budget cuts that could affect their districts.

The Pentagon is also bracing for proposed cuts to its work force, and has already been asked to hand over to the Trump administration lists of probationary employees who could be laid off.

A senior military official said on Wednesday that Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency had expressed interest in moving full-time Pentagon employees to contract positions so that they would be easier to fire.

On social media on Tuesday, Mr. Hegseth shared a post from Mr. Musk’s team saying that it was looking forward to eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse.”

“DOGE the waste; Double-Down on warriors,” Mr. Hegseth wrote.