WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced plans to reallocate 8 percent of the defense budget to efforts to building the force, and freeze hiring.
During a recorded, on-camera address from the Pentagon Thursday, Hegseth discussed his priorities of strengthening the military by cutting fiscal fraud, waste and abuse at DOD while also finding ways to refocus the department's budget.
Hegseth said beginning immediately, the Pentagon will pull 8 percent - or roughly $50 billion - from nonlethal programs in the current budget and refocus that money on President Donald Trump's 'America First' priorities for national defense.
'That's not a cut; it's refocusing and reinvesting existing funds into building the force that protects you, the American people,' Hegseth said.
Hegseth said to tackle excess spending and address the issue of fraud, waste and abuse within the department, he would be relying on the recently established Department of Government Efficiency.
He added that DOGE would be given access to systems - with proper safeguards and classifications - to first find redundancies and identify previous priorities not core to the department's current mission and then get rid of them.
However, he made it clear that funds will not be refocused on areas such as border protection, fighting transnational criminal organizations, nuclear modernization, submarine programs, missile defense, drone technology, cybersecurity, core readiness and training and the defense industrial base.
Hegseth denied recent reports that the Defense Department would do across-the-board cuts of all probationary employees.
He said leaders are reevaluating probationary employees 'carefully and smartly,' and future manning decisions would be based, in part, on quality of performance.
'We're starting [cuts] with the poor performers among our probationary employees because it's common sense that you want the best and brightest'.
Hegseth added that the Pentagon will implement a hiring freeze to take time to identify better hiring practices as they relate to finding the most 'hard charging' employees that are central to the department's core warfighting mission.
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