Spox: Inside the Pentagon, DOGE ‘is not going to stop’ anytime soon

The DOGE team at the Defense Department will continue to move fast and influence major bureaucratic reforms in the months to come, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson.

Although she didn’t disclose immediate next steps for the Trump administration-led initiative, Wilson spotlighted the Department of Government Efficiency’s ongoing momentum there during her first off-camera briefing on Thursday.

“DOGE work at the department is not going to stop — that is absolutely for certain,” Wilson told reporters.

At the start of his second term in January, President Donald Trump launched a large-scale, disruptive push across the federal government to uncover “waste, fraud and abuse,” and ultimately slash certain types of spending and personnel positions to enable savings for taxpayers.

Spearheaded by billionaire tech titan Elon Musk, DOGE teams were rapidly set up at the Pentagon and across other federal agencies to implement Trump’s vision. 

Months later, in May, Musk’s tenure as a special government employee ended, and his relationship with the president seemed to sour. Since then, questions have swirled about what’s next in terms of DOGE’s plans for Pentagon and military personnel.

“We are committed to cutting government waste and bureaucracy wherever we can,” Wilson said on Thursday. “So, our DOGE team is going to be looking into all facets of that across this department, across the services, and they’re going to be engaging with the services to make sure that we’re doing everything in a uniform fashion that makes sense — and to make sure that our warfighters have everything they need.” 

Wilson told reporters that she was unable to provide any details about the total size and functions of the DOGE squad at the Pentagon, in its current version.

“But I can tell you that they’re a fantastic team of individuals. A lot of them have prior military service, so they really understand the needs of our warfighters in this department,” she said.

In the early days of the DOGE operation, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered all defense agencies and the U.S. military to review programs to make major cuts, and reset their spending to better align with Trump’s priorities. He also called for a “strategic reduction” of the DOD civilian workforce by 5-8% through various mechanisms, including a temporary hiring freeze, terminations to probationary staff, and voluntary employee participation in the deferred resignation program (DRP).

Officials told DefenseScoop this week that Pentagon leadership had approved about 55,000 applications for deferred resignations, as of July.

At Thursday’s briefing, Wilson said the department currently has “no updates” to provide on the near-term plans and pipeline for this evolving workforce reduction initiative.

“But I can tell you that the department is committed to modernizing and optimizing and aligning our civilian workforce. These various initiatives have helped us achieve a lot of great things — and no final decisions have been made regarding additional reductions at this time, but we will keep you all posted,” Wilson told DefenseScoop.

“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,” the press secretary said.