Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior military leaders to plan on cutting 8% from the department’s budget for each of the next five years, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
According to a memo obtained by the outlet, Hegseth ordered that the proposed cuts be identified by Feb. 24. The memo also includes a list of 17 areas that the Trump administration wants exempted from the plans, with southern U.S. border operations, nuclear weapons modernization and missile defense, and acquisition of one-way attack drones among them.
The 2025 Pentagon budget is approximately $850 billion and the general view on Capitol Hill is reportedly that massive spending is needed to defend against Chinese and Russian threats. The Post reported that if the budget cuts are adopted in full, tens of billions of dollars would be cut from each of the next five years’ spending plans.
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