WASHINGTON — Depending on who you ask, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has either been a radical effort that has saved taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, or a wild goose chase that has crippled the government for years to come.
One thing that many can agree on, however, is uncertainty about exactly how much money has been saved, and where. That’s true especially in the Pentagon, where numbers thrown around by different officials don’t seem to line up.
Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell said in June the DoD had saved “over $10 billion.” A month later, the Air Force said in a statement that officials “reviewed over 500 contracts and 50 business systems, realizing savings and cost avoidance of $10.4B.” Then earlier this month the Pentagon released a budget overview for fiscal 2026 [PDF] that identified $13.8 billion saved “through the reduction of excess bureaucratic costs,” but that was only part of “nearly $30 billion that was realigned” from some DoD projects to “higher priority programs” following “efficiency reviews.”
Amid all the figures, one document quietly provided some black-and-white clarity: the fiscal 2026 defense budget, which listed hundreds of cases of DOGE-related savings — a few million dollars here, a few thousand dollars there, scattered across pages and pages.
No total amount of savings was originally offered in the budget submission, so at Breaking Defense’s request, the American Enterprise Institute conducted a line-by-line analysis of the budget to determine DOGE’s impact on the DoD so far.
AEI’s work concluded that the budget documents show roughly $11.1 billion in DOGE-related cuts, largely through workforce reductions across a number of Pentagon programs. Budget documents also reflect other measures to reduce spending like slashing travel.
In some ways, it’s the most granular accounting put on paper for DOGE’s time at the Pentagon, but as with DOGE’s work elsewhere, comes with a host of caveats and no small amount of confusion.
“What is a DOGE cut versus a program reduction versus some other efficiency initiative that may have been going on,” said AEI’s Todd Harrison, a longtime budget expert. “So it’s a little hard to define, but they are at least claiming credit for these cuts that we can see in the budget request. There may be other reductions elsewhere that we can’t see.”
What The Budget Analysis Shows
The listing of DOGE-led savings are somewhat unique, noted AEI’s Elaine McCusker, a former Pentagon comptroller who served during the first Trump administration.
Whereas most administrations in their first year are eager to get their budget on Capitol Hill — leaving little time to make significant changes — the inaugural budget from the second Trump administration reflected tangible efforts to reshape military spending. And while the savings were difficult to identify and compile in the budget documents, “the fact that they did it at all, I think, is interesting and commendable,” she said.
McCusker’s AEI colleagues cautioned that the DOGE savings data they manually extracted may have some inaccuracies due to how they were written in budget documents, which at times showed positive or negative numbers, misspellings and other inconsistencies. (One Democratic lawmaker recently chided the Pentagon for a number of what he called “big mistakes” in the DoD’s budget proposal.)
By service, the Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, led the way in DOGE savings with what was identified as nearly $3.7 billion in cuts across its spending accounts, according to AEI’s analysis. Close behind was the Army with $3.2 billion. The Air Force, which includes the Space Force, followed with approximately $2.3 billion in cost reductions. Defense-wide savings further totaled $1.9 billion.
The AEI analysis shows a clear trend toward savings found primarily by targeting two types of civilian workers: employees who worked directly for DoD and contractors. Pentagon civilians were targeted through various layoffs and a deferred resignation program encouraging exits. Contractors were hit with contract cancellations, hitting big-name firms and federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs).
Many of the savings discussed in budget documents recycle similar language, typically pointing to one of two DOGE-focused executive orders — one on “cost efficiency” and another on “workforce optimization” — to justify the reductions.
Take the Air Force’s KC-46 Pegasus refueler tanker. Procurement documents list a roughly $6.3 million cut to the program “for Advisory and Assistance Services,” which the description says was carried out “to promote efficiencies and advance the policies of the Administration in alignment with Executive Order 14222, ‘Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency Cost Efficiency Initiative.’”
The Navy’s CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopter procurement similarly saw its personnel funding reduced via DOGE, this time by about $3.4 million. The service’s budget documents say the cut was “for civilian personnel to optimize the workforce in compliance with Executive Order 14210, Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency Workforce Optimization Initiative.” The program’s advisory and assistance services were reduced by nearly $1 million as well, according to the documents.
Considering the cuts to staff positions, it’s perhaps no surprise that the Pentagon’s operations and maintenance (O&M) account came in first among DOGE cuts, with over $8.1 billion in savings. The Pentagon’s research and development account came in a distant second with over $1.8 billion in spending cuts, followed by procurement that saw a decrease of nearly $1.1 billion. Revolving and management spending rounded out the DOGE cuts with $11.9 million reduced, according to AEI’s analysis.
Travel appeared to be another main source of DOGE savings, with no number too small. The Army’s O&M budget documents, for example, show that along with workforce cuts, the service trimmed roughly $45,000 from the Industrial Preparedness subactivity group for “discretionary travel funding to align with Executive Order 14222, ‘Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency Cost Efficiency Initiative.’”
What The Pentagon Says About Its Own Numbers
Recently, the Pentagon released an official budget overview detailing changes to the DoD’s spending as a result of administration initiatives, which announced that “efficiency reviews” yielded “nearly $30 billion that was realigned to higher priority programs” — a number that includes $12.7 billion in program changes like the cancellation of the E-7 Wedgetail radar plane, among other categories.
That same overview claims the Pentagon’s FY26 budget cuts $13.8 billion “through the reduction of excess bureaucratic costs by reshaping and optimizing the civilian workforce, reducing contracts for advisory and assistance services, and reducing travel costs.”
Of those claimed figures, $6.8 billion was saved by “workforce optimization/working capital fund efficiencies,” whereas $5.5 billion was cut from advisory and assistance service contracts and FFRDCs. Workforce optimization primarily refers to civilian employees, while advisory and assistance services cover contracted work. The document then says $1.1 billion was saved on travel and $400 million from “other reforms.”
The overview doesn’t attribute these personnel savings specifically to DOGE, saying only that the efficiency reviews were performed to “implement executive orders,” though the budget documents show that labor cuts were justified by the DOGE-related executive orders. A section in the overview that bears the title of DOGE “identified savings” doesn’t list a dollar value, but does read that “390 contracts and grants have been terminated or adjusted by DOGE efforts, and Department-wide reviews are continuing to scrutinize over 400,000 open contracts and grants for additional savings in FY 2026 and beyond.” DOGE-driven “efficiency efforts,” the document adds, “are multi-layered and will be enacted over multiple budget cycles.”
But those aren’t the only figures the Pentagon has put out. Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the military services to collectively free up $50 billion that could be directed to new priorities in FY26, and the lines between DOGE-specific cuts, general priority reviews and other administration initiatives can be somewhat hazy.
It’s further unclear exactly how those differing figures match up with what is in the FY26 budget documents. A spokesperson for the Pentagon said, “The Secretary continues to actively pursue the President’s agenda by ridding out the waste, fraud, and abuse in the Department and reallocating the savings to fund different parts of the critical war fighting ability,” but declined to respond on the record to specific questions about DOGE savings in the budget request. The Army and Navy did not respond to a request for comment.
An Air Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense in July that the Department of the Air Force “conducted efficiency reviews” which “achieve[d] cost savings or avoidance on contracts” by “descoping, reducing the contract ceiling, terminating, or declining to exercise contract option periods.”
As one example, the spokesperson said officials “terminated or descoped the Air Force Strategic Transformation Support Contract which yielded approximately $4.8B in cost savings/avoidance,” noting that duties under the contract “will be performed by our highly skilled DoD workforce.” The FY26 budget documents “do not reflect comprehensive DOGE savings,” they added.
Considering the volume of cuts touted by the Air Force, it’s possible that savings detailed in budget documents overlap. It’s unclear what programs exactly are involved in the Strategic Transformation Support contract, but government notices say the contract vehicle is for “advisory and assistance services,” the same type of activity that budget documents list as cut. Exact figures and their links to programs remain difficult to parse without further clarity from the Pentagon.
Confusion Remains About DOGE Impact
John Ferrari, a retired two-star Army general and AEI analyst, praised DOGE “for the actual cuts they did,” but cautioned that officials should avoid “overstating” them.
Noting the disparity between the $13.8 billion figure in the overview and the $11.1 billion identified in AEI’s analysis, Ferrari remarked the two numbers are “remarkably close,” and that the analysis appeared to be “fairly accurate” as a result. He added that the Trump administration should be “commended” for the summary providing DOGE’s impact, but pointed out that the overview arrived well after the budget was unveiled. Additionally, he noted the overview doesn’t track DOGE’s changes to individual programs — making it more difficult for some officials, like congressional staffers, to see specific effects.
“They need to come up with a better way for next year” to illustrate the DOGE cuts, he said.
The questions about what exactly is being “saved” and where also runs into concerns about whether the DOGE cuts are helping the Pentagon’s core mission.
The Trump administration has emphasized the staff reductions carried out across the federal government have increased efficiency by simply doing the same work with fewer workers. But the nature of how those cuts were carried out raises questions about whether that goal was really achieved, said AEI’s Harrison.
“I think the way you make the reduction matters a whole lot,” Harrison said, pointing to DOGE’s aggressive campaign to shrink the federal government. “I have serious questions and concerns about how they went about making these DOGE reductions, you know, the ‘Fork in the Road’ email, the bullying tactics,” adding those measures “could be very counterproductive to efficiency.”
He later added that “you can save a lot of money by cutting personnel, but if you don’t cut the work that has to be done, you’re just gonna end up paying those costs in a different way.”
The Pentagon’s budget overview paints a particularly stark picture. According to a table included in the overview, the FY26 budget cuts over 5 percent of the department’s civilian workforce, amounting to more than 40,000 full-time positions.
The Department of the Army led the way with a planned nearly 11 percent reduction, whereas the Department of the Air Force, which includes the Space Force, came in second with over 4 percent. Defense-wide personnel reductions came in third at about 3.6 percent, and the Department of the Navy rounded out the list at about 3.4 percent in cuts. (The summary lists Full-Time Equivalents, or FTEs, which measure the workload of a full-time employee, since many workers may be part-time or temporary.)
Source: DoD budget overview
“That much of a reduction in one year?” Harrison asked. “That is highly unusual, if not unprecedented.”
Harrison did a deep dive in the FY26 budget documents on the impacts on Space Force personnel, calculating that the service axed roughly 400 to 450 civilian workers, an approximate 10 percent reduction in its workforce. Another 1,000 or so contracted personnel were also let go, at a time the Space Force’s responsibilities are growing and ambitious new projects like the Golden Dome missile defense scheme are taking shape.
“For the Space Force, that’s pretty significant,” he said.
Some DOGE savings may be somewhat illusory. For example, a contract could be canceled well short of its ceiling value — as was the case in the Air Force’s Strategic Transformation Support contract — which Harrison noted may never be reached anyway. Some of those cuts could be better understood as cost avoidance, rather than a saving. Many of the cuts in the budget documents reflect workforce reductions and slashed travel, meaning that they could measure up to true savings, though it appears the DoD reinvested those dollars instead of pocketing them. Considering the DoD is actively culling its workforce, it’s likely many cuts are already being realized.
Despite Elon Musk’s unceremonious exit from the Trump administration, officials have said DOGE’s work will continue. About 154,000 federal workers took the administration’s offer for a deferred resignation, according to the Washington Post, and in July, the Supreme Court cleared the way for more mass layoffs. A government-wide hiring freeze, with some exceptions, means many of those vacant positions may not be filled any time soon.
“DOGE’s work as the department is not going to stop, that is absolutely for certain. We are committed to cutting government waste and bureaucracy wherever we can,” DoD spokesperson Kingsley Wilson said in a gaggle with reporters on Aug. 7. “At the end of the day, we want to make sure our warfighters are equipped to do their jobs, and that relies on a department that is functioning efficiently.”
AEI Research Assistant Dillon Prochnicki and interns David Glick and Evangelina Meyer contributed analysis for this story. Breaking Defense’s Ashley Roque contributed reporting.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Michael Marrow
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://breakingdefense.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
