Trump administration shrinks Defense Technical Information Center staff from 154 to 40
More than 100 employees serving in various roles at the Pentagon’s decades-old disseminator and major repository for science and technology information will receive termination notices this month, DefenseScoop has learned.
Senior Defense Department officials unveiled plans this week to slash the Defense Technical Information Center’s workforce down to 40 civilian positions — marking the latest move in an ongoing series of personnel reductions across the federal government under the second Trump administration.
In response to questions from DefenseScoop, a defense official confirmed on Tuesday that “there were originally 154 employees” in DTIC ahead of these forthcoming cuts, resulting in the expected termination of roughly 74% of its staff.
Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael issued an official memorandum on Monday outlining leadership’s vision for this “targeted, deliberate, and expeditious civilian reduction-in-force (RIF),” which he also referred to as a “rationalization and AI-first digital transformation of DTIC to better meet the secretary’s priorities for the department.”
In an accompanying statement, chief Pentagon spokesman and senior advisor Sean Parnell said the “decision eliminates duplicative functions and will refocus DTIC to its core statutory mission of administering a library of technical information and improving the user experience.”
Broadly, the DTIC is considered an authoritative and secure DOD resource for technological research, development, testing and evaluation information.
Roots of the centralized defense repository trace back to 1945. Today, its services are available to government personnel, federal contractors and select academic institutions — and its unclassified products are also offered to the general public.
“However, its unfocused organizational model and legacy information platform are not suited to keep pace with global R&D, take advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AI), or integrate with other data and intelligence systems that support strategic deterrence-impacting R&D investment decisions by the Department of Defense,” Michael wrote in the memo.
He confirmed that all DTIC civilian personnel not retained in one of the 40 positions will receive a Specific Notice of RIF by Aug. 25.
Contractors working for the center might also face cuts.
Silvana Rubino-Hallman was appointed to serve as the DTIC’s acting administrator and oversee this workforce reduction effort. In that capacity, she will “conduct a zero-based core mission review for all contractor personnel augmenting DTIC staff and will direct cognizant contracting officers to issue any stop-work-orders as appropriate,” Michael noted in the memo.
Both he and Parnell suggested that these actions are anticipated to save the department $25 million per year and ultimately reflect the Trump administration’s commitments to technology modernization and bureaucratic reforms.
Pentagon spokespersons declined to provide more information regarding the positions that will be cut or retained in the workforce reduction pursuit, or how AI will be deployed to enable DTIC moving forward.
