Retired Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer 3 Thomas J. Heaton's career encompassed over two decades of service, including nine deployments across various theaters of operations. Heaton, who served in both counterintelligence and human intelligence roles in the
Retired Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer 3 Thomas J. Heaton's career encompassed over two decades of service, but his journey post-service led him to his four-legged partner, Colt.
Top leaders at the Pentagon say they have begun making budget cuts in pursuit of President Donald Trump's efforts to dramatically scale back the federal government, but have not offered much in the way of details or evidence for those moves as questions and skepticism mount.
Meanwhile, the firings of 5,400 Defense Department civilian employees announced Feb. 21 may finally begin this week, according to Pentagon documents. But whom the firings will target and whether those people are actually low performers were still unclear.
The result is that, despite promises of a transparent and accountable Defense Department, the new administration has mostly kept the public in the dark about what is happening in the military as Trump and his cabinet aggressively slash the size of the government and its workforce.
In a video message posted to social media[2] Monday evening, the Pentagon's top spokesman, Sean Parnell, said that billionaire Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which was recently granted access[3] to the Pentagon as it fires employees and terminates programs across the government, made "initial findings" that "will probably save $80 million in wasteful spending."
As evidence, Parnell offered four examples of programs that are being cut: a $1.9 million Air Force[4] program for "holistic DEI transformation and training;" $6 million in funds to the University of Montana "to strengthen American democracy by bridging divides;" $3.5 million in support to groups at the Defense Human Resources Activity; and $1.6 million in funds to the University of Florida "to study social and institutional detriments of vulnerability and resilience to climate hazards in African Sahel."
The cuts that Parnell laid out total $13 million -- not $80 million -- and DOGE has already developed a track record of inaccurate[5]or inflated claims[6]about the savings it is generating by slashing[7] government spending. The Trump administration has targeted programs it considers related to "diversity, equity and inclusion," or DEI, which has been widely interpreted by the military to mean programs that support women and troops with minority backgrounds.
Military.com was told Tuesday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's office didn't have a statement or any information to provide on the video or its claims. One defense official directed questions about the cuts to DOGE and not the Pentagon's internal budget office.
Taken at face value, if the $80 million in cuts is accurate, it represents a reduction of about .001%, given the Pentagon's current annual budget is $841.4 billion.
Despite Hegseth and Parnell's claims that the Pentagon will be transparent under their leadership, it appears that they are not only shying away from offering details to the public but to Congress as well.
Asked Tuesday whether he knows the details of what's in the $80 million DOGE allegedly found to cut, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said he "hasn't seen anything" about it. The committee is tasked with congressional oversight of the military, including its budget priorities.
"I didn't even know that figure," he added, saying he hadn't seen the video the Pentagon posted to social media.
Hegseth briefed House Republicans on Tuesday morning about his plans for the Pentagon, but that meeting included no discussion of the DOGE cuts, Rogers said.
"It was very generic, at the 50,000-foot level," he said.
Rogers has advocated for a massive boost to the Pentagon budget, backing a House GOP plan to add $100 billion in the coming years. But he said he does not see any conflict between that goal and DOGE's cuts.
"My view about whatever DOGE is looking at is they're looking for stupid stuff," he added. "And if they find stupid stuff and say we ought to get rid of it, I'm all for it. If they find stuff that they think is stupid and I disagree with, we're going to have a discussion."
Asked for a definition of stupid, Rogers said he's "got to see what they find."
Meanwhile, officials inside the Pentagon are also staying silent about whether they have begun to execute their plan to fire thousands of civilian workers.
The Pentagon announced its intent to fire the 5,400 civilian, probationary employees on Feb. 21 as part of an "initial effort" to cut the Defense Department's civilian workforce by 5% to 8%, which was originally set to begin the following week.
Darin Selnick, the man who is currently performing the duties of the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, framed the planned firings as a purge of people "whose contributions are not mission-critical."
Now, a week after the cuts were set to begin, it's not clear whether anyone has actually been fired.
Military.com reviewed a memo signed by Selnick on Monday that directed the firings of probationary employees to begin the same day. This memo, however, did not offer an explanation for why the firings didn't start last week as originally planned.
Military.com asked Selnick's team for an explanation or details of any firings but was told they didn't "have anything to share at this time." However, a federal judge recently ruled[10] that the mass firings, as they are currently being carried out, are likely unlawful.
In the absence of actual terminations, details about who expects to be fired have begun to emerge, and the cuts appear to target people who provide services like child care to troops, employees of the service academies, or departments that exist to offer a check on military power.
Hill Air Force Base[11] in Utah is expecting major cuts to hit the base's child development centers[12], or CDCs. A memo sent out to troops on the base said that day care employees who either voluntarily took a deferred resignation offer from the administration or fell within a probationary employment period are being targeted for firings by the White House's Office of Personnel Management.
Last Thursday, the Air Force Academy[13] dean of faculty warned her staff of potential layoffs among civilians set for Friday. It was not clear whether those firings took place.
The Washington Post has also reported[14] that the Pentagon is looking to shutter efforts to protect civilians from danger posed by U.S. military operations, and specifically the effort known as Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response.
This push comes as Hegseth has rolled back constraints[15] on U.S. commanders' ability to authorize airstrikes and special operations raids outside traditional battlefields. The move means that a far larger group of people can be targeted by the military.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported[16] that Hegseth also told top military officials in Mexico that he was prepared to act without their buy-in -- a statement that they took to mean the U.S. was prepared to take military action inside their country.
The Pentagon's top doctor pledged Monday to defend the military health system's $61 billion budget but said more could be done to balance resources and improve medical care.
Dr. Steve Ferrara, the Defense Department's acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, told an audience at the AMSUS Society of Federal Health Professionals that the system, which serves 9.6 million beneficiaries, is a "force multiplier" that meets Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's priority to strengthen U.S. operational forces.
In his role as acting assistant secretary, Ferrara said he would show Hegseth how the military health system, or MHS, budget, which accounts for 7% of the Pentagon's top-line, is "100% worthy." The press was barred from the conference[1], despite reporters having access for years, but Military.com reviewed a recording of Ferrara's speech.
"I show him how we take that 7% -- which has been obviously jealously fought over, whether it's going to be for bullets or bombs or submarines or tanks or airplanes -- and use that 7% to make the force more lethal, more fit to fight and win," Ferrara said during the speech.
The military health system has undergone a vast transformation in the past decade, with military treatment facilities, medical logistics, information technology, acquisitions, the Tricare[3] health program for nonuniformed beneficiaries, and other services consolidated under the Defense Health Agency, while active-duty health care, uniformed medical professional training and development became the responsibility of the services' medical commands.
The reforms were designed to save money by eliminating triplicate functions within the Army[4], Navy[5] and Air Force medical commands and streamlining the Pentagon's health organization. But they have left many military hospitals and clinics understaffed and patients leaving for -- or being forced on -- the private sector, jeopardizing the system's balance.
This year, turmoil has demonstrated itself with delays in patient care as the result of a change in Tricare management contractors and billing processors, and on Friday, the head of the Defense Health Agency, Army Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, resigned unexpectedly without explanation[6].
Ferrara, a retired Navy interventional radiologist and former CIA chief medical officer who is married to a Navy pediatric nephrologist, said a functioning, quality health care system is vital to the readiness of the U.S. armed forces[7], an "ethical imperative" the nation must honor.
Ferrara said his priorities are to "support, sustain and strengthen" -- supporting the warfighters, sustaining professional medical skills, and strengthening the chain made up of the generations of providers who have served and will join in future.
To ensure satisfaction, he said, the system must work for everybody, including the soldier wounded on the battlefield, the sailor training at home, the service members who need embedded mental health providers, and the family members who get ill or injured.
"The last thing that a family or that service member needs is to be worried about whether their family is getting adequate or high-quality care," Ferrara said.
In a separate speech at the AMSUS conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Navy Surgeon General Rear Adm. Darin Via said that Navy medicine is roughly 10% below its total manning capacity, a shortfall felt most at the military treatment facilities.
"That is felt most with access to care. When it comes to the sailor, the Marine and their families, where that is impacted most is when someone has an [anterior cruciate ligament] injury. If you're a professional athlete, you'd [get surgery] as soon as the swelling goes down in a couple of weeks," Via said in a copy of the speech reviewed by Military.com.
"From the MTFs, it is whenever the orthopod can get OR time within the schedule, which is already limited because there's not enough anesthesiologists, there's not enough nurses or there's not enough [surgery] techs."
Ferrara said that to make improvements, the system must ensure that its priorities and resources are intertwined, seeking out any "mismatches" and treading new ground, looking at improved partnerships with the Department of Veterans Affairs[8], academic health centers and foreign allies.
According to Ferrara, the Pentagon needs to fix its military hospital system; maximize the value of the Tricare health program and "simplify the Tricare experience;" and leverage technology, including doubling down on telehealth to expand capacity and using artificial intelligence.
Ferrara added that this review is an "all-hands-on-deck" initiative, calling for those who work daily within the military health system to voice their ideas.
"I'm hoping you can help me solve my problems, and so I thank you in advance," Ferrara said.
Bass has not issued any public comments on the future of Defense Department health care. He served as the head of the White House medical unit from 2017 to 2019 and, at the time of his nomination, was the medical center director of the West Texas VA Health Care System.
Bass' confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee has not been set.
Retired Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer 3 Thomas J. Heaton's career encompassed over two decades of service, including nine deployments across various theaters of operations. Heaton, who served in both counterintelligence and human intelligence roles in the
