Hegseth guts the Pentagon's weapons testing office
A sweeping reorganization is weakening the Pentagon's office that tests weapons, an office established by Congress that has met plenty of resistance from the contractors who build weapons and the military leaders who buy them.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the cuts on Wednesday, releasing a memorandum on staff reductions, a leadership change, and pivot in focus.
The Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation underwent "a comprehensive internal review," Hegseth said, which led to identifying "redundant, non-essential, non-statutory functions" not aligned with "operational agility or resource efficiency, affecting our ability to rapidly and effectively deploy the best systems to the warfighter."
The office will "immediate eliminate" any non-statutory or redundant functions and be cut to a staff of 30 civilians and 15 assigned military personnel. Civilian personnel employed by military departments at ODOT&E will be transferred back to those departments, and other civilian employees will receive a reduction-in-force notice.
An expert on military reform said these are the largest cuts to this office in its four-decade history and jeopardize its ability to ensure weapons are thoroughly tested before they get in soldiers' hands.
The memo didn't note the previous workforce numbers of ODOT&E. Leadership of the office was also changed, with Hegseth appointing Carroll Quade, the deputy for test evaluation for the Navy, as director the office's acting director.
The Pentagon's press office told Business Insider there was no further information on the matter at this time.
In a video posted online, Hegseth said the move is planned to promote efficiency so "that warfighters get what they need faster." The defense secretary also said in his memo that the reorganization "will save more than $300 million per year and reflect the Department's commitment to continued reform and reducing bureaucracy."
In a note released Thursday, Chief Pentagon spokesman and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell said the decision refocuses DOT&E to its "intent as an oversight body," would refocus on the acquisitions of weapons and systems, and "empowers the Services and Combatant Commands with greater trust to ensure the warfighter is efficiently equipped to address emerging challenges and to preserve our decisive advantage."
DOT&E has acted as an independent reviewer of various weapons programs in the Pentagon's portfolio with the goal of ensuring that they're tested to meet the expected conditions of combat and the needs of troops before being purchased in high quantities.
Much of the work of the office is pointing out weapons that are having problems or failing to meet timelines, such as the F-35 stealth figher. It has provided analysis of operational testing useful for Congress. DOT&E was established by Congress in 1983.
The reorganization guts the office's capacity to observe the service's system tests, review the data, and conduct independent analysis, said Dan Grazier, a senior fellow and director of the national security reform program at the Stimson Center think tank. There have been proposed reforms over the decades, some of which would threaten the independence of the office. But this marks the most substantial overhaul since its creation over 40 years ago.
"This policy change," he said, "is going to mean that new weapons systems are not going to face the level of scrutiny that they really need to" in order to "make sure that they are both effective and suitable for use of the troops before they make it into the hands of the troops."
ODOT&E's role has been to ensure that personnel not connected to the service's programs or acquisition processes aren't the only ones reviewing the testing. It's a labor-intensive process, Grazier said, and because ODOT&E hasn't traditionally had a large workforce, it's often used contractor support.
Without that independent analysis, Grazier has noted, there will be questions around the effectiveness of programs. "Unless the operational testing office maintains its current highly independent status, Congress and the American people may not know if the weapons they purchase for the military actually work as intended," he wrote for Stimson back in February.
There have been some questions over the years from defense officials, lawmakers in Washington, and experts about the defined roles of DOT&E, how emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and autonomy can and should be evaluated for warfighter use, and what's required for realistic combat testing of systems.
Hegseth's reorganization of the office falls in line with a broad campaign in the Trump administration to identify what it views as needless bureaucracy, as well as limit independent assessment by officials. Days after taking office in January, President Donald Trump removed 17 inspector generals from across the government, including at the Defense Department; these officials led internal watchdogs charged with investigating wasteful spending and fraud.
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has been a leading effort to rapidly slash government spending, but there have been concerns and criticisms about how DOGE collects its data on government spending and programs — and determines what should be cut.
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