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Pentagon has already discovered $80 million in wasteful spending thanks to DOGE

March 4, 2025 | | Print Article

With the help of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Pentagon has discovered $80 million in wasteful spending.

Department of Defense (DoD) spokesperson Sean Parnell announced the findings in a video posted to Twitter/X on Monday.

Watch:

He revealed that most of the wasteful spending was found in contracts linked to climate change and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

“This stuff is not a core function of our military,” he said. “This is a distraction. We believe that these initial findings will probably save $80 million in wasteful spending.”

The Pentagon found, for example, that the Air Force had earmarked roughly $2 million for “holistic DEI transformation and training.”

The Defense Human Resources Activity, which “provides centralized and comprehensive personnel data management and analysis for the entire Department of Defense (DoD),” meanwhile received $3.5 million to support DEI groups.

Another $6 million was allocated to the University of Montana “to strengthen American democracy by bridging divides,” while $1.6 million was allocated to the University of Florida “to study social and institutional detriments of vulnerability and resilience to climate hazards in African Sahel.”

Parnell vowed that these are “just the start” and that more programs and contracts are set to be cut.

“We are working hand in glove with DOGE, so stay tuned in the weeks ahead as we trim the fat, preserve the muscle, make the DOD more mission capable and more lethal,” he said.

Parnell’s announcement was made the same day that retired Air Force Col. Robert L Maness penned an op-ed for the Washington Examiner identifying even more areas where cuts can and should be made, starting with the Navy.

“The U.S. Navy spends $40 million every year on bizarre marine animal experiments, which include but are not limited to blasting loud noises in their ears through headphones to assess their responses and teaching them how to play video games,” he wrote.

It gets worse.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency spent roughly $11 million “electroshocking cats and inserting marbles into their rectums to test a spinal cord injury treatment device,” according to Maness.

“These expensive, wasteful tests continue [to this day] despite the department admitting that ‘animal models have limited relevance to humans and poorly predict effects in humans,'” he explained.

But the “height of government waste” at the DoD centers around the F-35 fighter jet.

“The F-35 was sold as a revolutionary ‘fifth-generation’ fighter jet, a silver bullet to maintain air dominance for decades,” he wrote. “Instead, it’s become a trillion-dollar albatross. Over two decades after it was conceived, the Government Accountability Office now reports the F-35’s lifetime cost has ballooned to $1.7 trillion, with each jet costing upwards of $100 million before maintenance.”

“Worse, it’s plagued by delays, design flaws, and reliability issues — over 800 unresolved deficiencies by last count. As adversaries such as China advance cheaper, more focused systems, the U.S. continues to pour billions into a jet that’s often grounded. It was only 55% mission-capable last year, far below its 80% target. Continuing to spend taxpayer dollars on this egregiously wasteful project might make sense for billion-dollar defense contractors that have a lot of money on the line, but it does not make sense for anyone else,” he added.

The good news is that DOGE boss Elon Musk is reportedly aware of the F-35’s shortcomings and is planning to take action.

The only bad news is there are doubts whether Musk would be able to push cuts to the F-35 program through Congress.

“I think it would be a very difficult task to get Congress to agree to cut the F-35 project because members of Congress will see thundering hoof beats targeting the defense contracting programs they have in their districts,” TCU political science professor Jim Riddlesperger told The Dallas Morning News.

Vivek Saxena
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