Pete Hegseth, US defense secretary, left, and Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, Poland’s defense minister, during a news conference in Warsaw, Poland, on Feb. 14. (Damian Lemanski/Bloomberg)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to reduce projected US military spending by 8% over the next five years would spare southwest border enforcement, the Air Force’s newest drone program, nuclear weapons modernization and preparations for a clean audit, according to a new memo he sent to the services.
The Feb. 18 memo instructs “senior Pentagon leadership,” combat commands, Defense Department agencies, the service branches and civilian agencies to propose 8% cuts to their spending estimates for each of the five fiscal years starting with 2026. “I will conduct a relook” of what’s been prepared to date, Hegseth wrote, setting a Feb. 24 deadline for responses.
Hegseth listed 17 areas that “may not be included by the services and components in their 8% decrease.” In addition to border enforcement, the exempt list includes the Virginia-class submarine, what it terms “executable surface ship programs,” homeland missile defense, the Air Force’s new Collaborative Combat Aircraft, one-way attack drones, “priority critical cybersecurity, munitions and Indo-Pacom construction projects” and private sector medical care.
In keeping with favorite themes of President Donald Trump and Hegseth, the memo calls for targeting excessive bureaucracy and spending on programs linked to climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion, which Hegseth characterized as “low impact” and “wasteful.”
Like previous administrations, Hegseth’s team is reviewing and revising the previous administration’s notional spending blueprint, which projected expenditures of $876.8 billion for fiscal year 2026, up from $849 billion this year.
The review is Hegseth’s first foray into the budgetary nuts and bolts of running the largest US department.
His memo doesn’t address the future of some of the Defense Department’s major programs, including the costliest — the F-35 built by Lockheed Martin Corp. Although billionaire Elon Musk, a top Trump adviser, has said the fighter jet should be canceled in an era of drone warfare, Trump has talked of selling F-35s to India, which would require their continued production.
The Pentagon in a statement Thursday night said that about $50 billion will be reduced from the planned fiscal 2026 budget and those dollars wouldn’t be lost to the military but instead “will then be spent on programs aligned with President Trump’s priorities.”
“The department will develop a list of potential offsets that could be used to fund these priorities, as well as to refocus the department on its core mission of deterring and winning wars,” the department added in the statement.
