DOGE and the DOD
“Converting consultants into combat power”
Whoa: Hegseth Makes Big Announcement About DOGE Findings at Pentagon – They’re Massive
By Nick Arama
We got good news from Office of Management and Budget (OMB) head Russ Vought on Wednesday when he announced on Fox Business that the first bill codifying DOGE cuts would be coming next week.
The first bill will include foreign aid, USAID, and NPR, among other items. How much it will encompass in terms of money is not yet clear but those subjects could cover a lot.
That sounds like a good start. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was eager and ready to act on the bill so they could deliver even more cuts for the American people.
But there’s more coming because they’re still working and finding wasteful spending, and there are some of the big items at the Pentagon.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered an important statement on X on Wednesday in which he said they’d identified an enormous amount in potential cuts.
Hegseth said their main focus and charge he’d received from President Donald Trump was to restore the warrior ethos. He said a big part of that is finding out what works and what doesn’t work. They identified an overreliance on “management consultants and contractors.” He said they likely had more contractors than they had civilian employees.
He said reviewing these contracts with DOGE, they’d identified $5 billion in savings, in addition to the $5 billion they’d already identified.
Hegseth also said he was issuing three memos.
The first was responsibly reducing the number of management consultants and contractors. He stressed these were not fighters, but people who “gave PowerPoints.” The second dealt with needed reforms to the Department’s usage of executive assistants. The third involved restructuring the Department’s operational and test evaluation office, which will make testing weapons more efficient.
10B USD in savings? Not bad for a two-week effort. The memos are huge- the entire military acquisition process is in dire need of reform and DOT&E is the place to start. These are the folks who green-lighted the Littoral Combat Ship for a shining reason why. As for the rest, it’s long been a fact that most contractors will make more than their government counterparts, and Admirals come and go but EA’s are forever.
This is a very good start but just that- a start.
Category: Big Pentagon
I am very interested in the DOT&E part, since it seems to have specific safeguards and procedures that they follow, but whenever you ask for the results they always hem and haw about the product not yet ready!
Arrests? I want drumhead tribunals and firing squads.
So just curious, can a district judge issue a nationwide injunction against a bill that passes the house and senate?
Hide and watch.
You beat me to it Grunt, I was about to comment that the bill has to pass all the 1000+ soros appointed Judges. Remember the 5 political parties we have now which are the republican, demoRat, lame stream media and the soros appointed Shit Bird Marxist judges. What happened to the Phoneix program..
These biased f*cktards would put an injuction on the sun rising in the east and setting in the west as racist.
Maybe.we should bring it back.
The short answer is yes if the judge is federal. It would have to be challenged on constitutional grounds or procedural grounds.
Texas Republicans challenged the 2023 budget in court because no quorum was present for the vote. They were only seeking to block a small portion of the bill.
Your answer would be the correct one, but lately, all a judge has to do is say “I don’t like it”, and voila, an injunction is born!
A good start…that would be a yes. A drop in the bucket? That too, would be a…yes.
Ike tried to warn us…didn’t he!
Pete could easily slash 40% of AMC. Things have actually gotten worse since DOGE. A simple purchase that once could be approved locally now requires multiple levels of approval, including people locally that were never in the chain of approval and have no idea why they are now (Our property book lady’s response was “Why in the fuck would I care what you guys need to buy? You don’t need my approval, I just need to see it when it comes in to see of it has to go on my books!) . Every upper level office is attempting to keep themselves relevant and safe from cuts by increasing the scope of their little kingdoms, thereby increasing their importance.
Got to justify the existence of all those GOFOs
We’re heavy there too, AMC is a massive command. Our problems are mainly at the GS12 level and up. Little tyrants trying to save their kingdom.
Those weekly five bullets about they did.
Thank God those stopped this week!
A billion here and a billion there and soon you are talking real money.
A lot of money would be saved if Uncle Sam wasn’t Uncle Sam’s most expensive customer. The tuition for basic and technical training could pay an Airman’s tuition for a private university. Mil-specs add nothing but costs to an on-the-shelf item. It’s cheaper to send something by FedEx, UPS, etc than by C-5.
I once asked how much Sammy charges Sammy to send someone to my tech school. When I got over the shock caused by the price quoted, I asked how come so much? The DFAS people told me I had to consider the cost of the building, utilities, payroll, maintenance, etc. I replied the building was at least 50 years old; I thought it would have been paid for by then.
I was working for a defense contractor when I got a call from a buyer from DLA. He was looking for a part for a piece of equipment, the model hadn’t been made in decades so parts were hard to find. I told him I had the part, and if he would waive all of the mil-specs and go with commercial packaging and marking vs the military required packaging and marking, I could have it delivered in a week. I went on to inform him it would take a month to meet the mil-specs and military packaging requirements. The price would have to be increased by, at least, 100%. My employer would have made no more profit by using the mil-spec and the Gov’t would have to go without the part for a month vs 1 week. The Gov’t waived the requirements; however, I never heard from the buyer again.
Waste is waste even when it’s required by regulation.
Someone once told me that the Army specification for Worcestershire Sauce was 11 pages long. I laughed. Then I tasted Army Worcestershire Sauce. It needs a few more pages.
But seriously, folks, sometimes there are valid reasons for detailed, seemingly ridiculous specifications.
By the way, the specs for Worcestershire are only 9 pages—
https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/CID%20Worcestershire%20Sauce.pdf
Sometimes there are valid reasons; the gizmo for the B-52, the whatzit for the M1-A(whatever number they’re up to), and the whatzamacallit for a sub need mil-specs. They are not needed for common items.
My favorite example is the farm tractor. Years ago the USAF used farm tractors to tow AGE equipment on the flight line, mow the grass between the runways and taxiways, etc. Did the USAF use the exact same tractor as the farmer outside the gate? Oh no it didn’t. Someone in the USAF decided the steering systems on some models had to be different; on other models it was the differential. All the differences caused a huge increase in price and a long lead time for parts.
The best example of mil-specs gone wild was the green t-shirt mandated for USAF fatigues about 1980. Someone forgot that the DoD is probably the largest single employer of teenagers in the USA. With all of the testing and mil-spec’ing they did, no one checked to see how the t-shirts would react to common acne medicines. 1st Sgt’s across the USAF were irate because Airman were wearing t-shirts with orange colored areas. More testing proved the t-shirts were discolored by acne medicine. The non mil-spec t-shirts the Airman wore with their civilian clothes didn’t turn orange.
I say leave mil-specs for items that are only used by the military or those common items that have special security needs (such as computers, transceivers, cell phones, etc). The money saved could get the troops and their families off of SNAP.
Executive assistants? I was authorized one in my last job before retirement but refused to fill the spot. Waste of money. On a good note, I sent off my last “five bullets” email two weeks ago. The last requirement, last week, was not a five bullets email. Instead it was asking for a recommendation on where cost savings could be found. Hopefully they get some useful ideas.
Well, the cuts are real everywhere. Even at good ole J S O C, where the money used to flow freely down the drain, a lot of credit cards have been cut off, positions left unfilled (the horror), and budgets slashed. And it is a good thing, a very good thing.