According to the Washington Post, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has signed a memo, ordering senior leaders at the Pentagon and across the U.S. Military to develop plans to cut roughly 40% of the defense budget by 2030, in increments of 8% per year for the next five… pic.twitter.com/DrRUEjHWxE
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) February 19, 2025
Military cuts?
8% every year for five years?
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior military and Defense Department officials to draw up plans to cut 8 percent from the defense budget over each of the next five years, officials said on Wednesday.
Mr. Hegseth said in a memo issued on Tuesday that a number of branches within the military and the Pentagon should turn in budget-cutting proposals by next Monday, two officials said. The memo listed some 17 exceptions to the proposed cuts, including military operations at the southern border.
One senior official said the cuts appeared likely to be part of an effort to focus Pentagon money on programs that the Trump administration favors, instead of actually cutting the Defense Department’s $850 billion annual budget. …”
Someone pinch me … am I dreaming?
“Someone pinch me … am I dreaming?”
You’re even more correct than you imagined.
I just saw Trump as a blocker to woke lunacy, nothing more.
DOD is far too bloated with graft, favoritism and sinecures, but sadly most of the cuts will go to the lower ranks, it always does.
“Someone pinch me … am I dreaming?”
Brad, I hear ya! Trump just continues to exceed expectations! Go Trump!
“Military cuts?
8% every year for five years?”
This is literally retarded. There is not 40% of waste in the DoD. Everyone talks about coffee pots that cost x amount of crazy dollars. Try making coffee at 35,000,000 feet, going at Mach 1.1, for about five hours and then diving to the deck and following mountain peaks at submach speed. Its not a normal coffee pot.
There are changes we can do with military procurement. There is fraud, waste, and abuse. There is more unaccountable spending. But, the biggest changes can be made in how we do the research, development, acquisition, procurement, and manufacturing. Its in rebuilding our industrial base and restoring our small-medium enterprises, its in breaking up the huge defense manufacturer conglomerates.
But cutting 40% of the military budget by 2030 while trying to face down the China threat is retarded. Taking American forces from overseas is beyond stupid. American military forces in the Persian Gulf have reduced oil prices by 50%. Without them there you would be paying more at the pump than the money you pay in taxes to fund the operations. Pulling American troops out of Afghanistan increased, immigration and refugees, increased terror cells in the West, and initiated the collapse of 7 American embassies overseas, the creation of a large anti-American power bloc unseen since 1975, and launch of two larger wars in Israel and Ukraine.
Meanwhile, we are facing the most epic enemy in American history, a country that outnumberes White Americans by 7-1, can outbuold us 5-1, can make 2 aircraft carriers to our 1, and just put a AI surveillance device on Hunter’s phone and know has his Personal Identity Information (social security number, DOB, Address, Spouse, children etc) every article he has ever written, much of his recent communication, his email and all his servers, etc. With such threats reducing the military is not going to happen. If it does, it means we’ve become nothing but a satrapy of New York City Financiers like the UK is of City of London.
“Someone pinch me … am I dreaming?”
Someone slap Hunter and wake him up.
Hey AGB
I actually agree with you on a lot of things, but this isn’t one of them. At all.
I’m a veteran. I spent 4 years in the military as an enlisted man. Yes that was a brief enlistment, but I saw my share.
Do you know how I spent 75% of my time? At the motor pool cleaning and maintaining my equipment and checking that it was in good working order. The same equipment that I cleaned and checked the week before that, and the week before that. Until field training time, which was the other 25%, when we’d run through a field exercise and test out our equipment in a combat simulation. Then we’d go back to the motor pool and spend the next month or so cleaning and testing the very same equipment that we’d spend the previous month or two cleaning and testing.
Oh and this was an entire platoon of about 40 soldiers doing this, day in and day out. And on any given 8 hour day of cleaning and testing equipment, 4 hours would be spent sitting or standing around waiting for orders, waiting for an officer to show up for an inspection, waiting for a fuel truck to arrive, sitting 2 hours in a convoy in a HMMWV (humvee for short) waiting for the orders to roll.
ANYONE who has EVER worn the uniform will laughingly refer to “hurry up and wait” as being the modus operandi of enlisted life.
When this is the daily routine of a half million or so enlisted soldiers (conservatively speaking) being paid 40,50k or more a year in salary, BAQ, and food allowance, the numbers quickly add up to the multi billions.
Now, this is the nature of the beast. The military isn’t a productive occupation. You don’t actually ever DO much of ANYTHING when there is no war to fight. Everything revolves preparation and readiness. It would be akin to automotive assembly line workers coming in every day and checking their assembly line equipment, cleaning and inspecting them, tightening the bolts and running them through diagnostics, but never actually building a car.
The military is a critical part of our government, that’s of no doubt. We need these people to be doing exactly what they do. The value of a prepared military outweighed the concern for waste to a large degree. However, to say that there is no waste in the military is to not even truly understand how the military works.
@Saracasticwit Bro,
“I’m a veteran. I spent 4 years in the military as an enlisted man. Yes that was a brief enlistment, but I saw my share.”
Likewise, ten here. Thank you for your service.
“Do you know how I spent 75% of my time?”
Hurrying up and wait.
“At the motor pool cleaning and maintaining my equipment and checking that it was in good working order. The same equipment that I cleaned and checked the week before that, and the week before that. Until field training time, which was the other 25%, when we’d run through a field exercise and test out our equipment in a combat simulation. Then we’d go back to the motor pool and spend the next month or so cleaning and testing the very same equipment that we’d spend the previous month or two cleaning and testing.”
I only wish civilian motor pools and mechanics kept such a standards and conducted proper vehicle PMC lists.
“ANYONE who has EVER worn the uniform will laughingly refer to “hurry up and wait” as being the modus operandi of enlisted life.”
Indeed. I actually wish most of our business companies did something similar. As it is they are so tight with Just-in-Time logistics and their tails so long that our business supply chains are overly fragile. When something like COVID occurs, things fall apart.
I remember when gas prices barely changed throughout the year. Now, they change daily because gas and oil companies no longer prepare and store excess to keep prices stable. The result is wild fluctuations in the economy.
“When this is the daily routine of a half million or so enlisted soldiers (conservatively speaking) being paid 40,50k or more a year in salary, BAQ, and food allowance, the numbers quickly add up to the multi billions.”
This is the normative throughout military history. Its to keep troops rested and prepared and trained for rapid and massive violence. I only wish they required less Woke and feeling and education programing and more training. Live fire, movement, and drilling needs to be increased massively.
“However, to say that there is no waste in the military is to not even truly understand how the military works.”
Where did I say there is no waste. I said its not up to 40% waste. Given that a huge amount of the black budget is passed thru the military services and DOD, that accounting errors or lack of accounting isn’t necessarily waste, fraud, and abuse, I’d estimate waste, fraud and abuse is probably no more than 15%. That’s still to high, but not near 40%. That number is thrown about purely as a negotiating tactic. We need to double whatever is real expenditures to prepare for the current threat.
Your post could have come out of the National Review. We should still be fighting in Afghanistan…. for reasons? Do they hate us for our freedom? Do we need to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here? DoD is a bloated wasteful monstrosity. It needs to be gutted like a pig
@Mikew,
“Your post could have come out of the National Review.”
Those cucks never appropriately called the enemy like I did: Sand N@ggers.
“We should still be fighting in Afghanistan…. for reasons?”
Between 2014-2020, the US had one single combat death in Afghanistan. We had between 13,500-20,000 troops there per year during this period. Most were supporting Afghan military operations against the Taliban. Most American were leading, supporting, or training the Afghans. Most combat was done by Special operations, CIA-DIA. Money was being spent at ever lower levels. For TEN YEARS this situation was going our way. Thats why the Talibanis decided to negotiate
The war was being handled by the Afghanis with our support. The Talibani were on the defensive despite getting massive support from Pakistan. All we needed was continuing providing air support, artillery support, specop and reconnaissance support, intelligence support, contractors, etc. But Biden shat the bed as usual. Today, we spend as much money on Afghanistan as we did before except it goes to the Afghan Talibanis instead of the Afghan Patriots. I doubt DOGE is going to investigate that though.
“Do they hate us for our freedom?”
No, the Talibani and their ignorant goat phucking, boy didling, girl trafficking, heroin trading supporters hate us because they ain’t us. They are Sand N@ggers. Ugly. Abusive. Sociopathic. Psychotic. Stupid. Gay. And Biden gave it all to them.
“Do we need to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here?”
Yes. Duh. Now that we abandoned Afghanistan and Central Asia, despite what the Activist Brains said here would happen, we have more refugees, asylees, and immigrants from those places. Afghans are still immigrating in larger numbers now than when we had troops in Afghanistan.
“DoD is a bloated wasteful monstrosity. It needs to be gutted like a pig.”
DoD is probably one of the more efficient departments, agencies, services, etc of the Federal government. There is more waste, fraud and abuse in most other areas of the Federal government. Its true DoD is one of the biggest, so probably big accounts to expose there, but probably less as a percentage than elsewhere.
> There is fraud, waste, and abuse.
The understatement of the century. With at least five failed audits and literally trillions unaccounted for, maybe it’s time to get started cleaning up the mess.
> With such threats reducing the military is not going to happen. If it does, it means we’ve become nothing but a satrapy of New York City Financiers like the UK is of City of London.
Expel all the traitors and bloodsuckers, whose roosts were expanded vastly starting in Clinton’s era. Getting rid of the black-supremacist DEI-general Charlie Brown is a fine opening shot. The US government (along with not a few state governments) have been nothing more than satrapies of NYC Financiers for a very long time. Just one small clue is the whole Ft. Knox BS. This is a federal building on a military base. Yet (despite) repeated requests from members of congress, the Federal reserve (a private banking cartel) denies audit requests refuses to allow inspection of the holdings – a portion of which were literall stolen from the American public in 1933 by FDR’s EO – another one which Trump needs to address.
The loyal elements of the military need to be sent to the border and used as backup to purge the FBI and DOJ of the many criminals ensconced there. This is a job well beyond a word like YUGE (to borrow a Trumpism).
It’s wasteful and with an anti American mission. With the pyramidal promotional scheme married to affirmative action, it’s virtually impossible for a white man to retire. Dod, which doesn’t even include dpt. Of energy and va costs, is 75 percent of non entitlement spending. Overseas bases are great for American men to realize their otherwise wasted sexual value, but not much else. Time to die.
It’s because the Jews want us to all die for Israel with only BB guns and paper airplanes.
@Sarcasticwit:
It does not matter what the Jews want … no matter what Bibi Netanyahoo thinks, even the most Judeophilic (and there’s none more that than Donald J. Trump) is NOT going to allow this country to be sucked into some dry husk and blow away on HIS watch.
This makes me think that our economy is in much more dire straits than our feckless elites are ready to admit. The throwing gold overboard from the Titanic started YEARS before Elon Musk and his brainy whiz kids came in.
This country has been being looted for decades now. And the American public is in no mood to receive lectures about not expecting Social Security to be available for them or their kids, because it’s all been spent without questioning where and on what?
Luckily, these tech bros like Elon Musk with satellite and drones and AI can supply lethal aid to our closest “ally” without shedding more American blood and treasure.
OK, maybe I was being too pessimistic in my comment on the post about abolishing the IRS. The biggest parts of the budget are social security, medicare/medicaid and the military. The military reduction is a good start.
Yup, you’re dreaming:
“The offsets are targeted at 8% of the Biden Administration’s FY26 budget, totaling around $50 billion, which will then be spent on programs aligned with President Trump’s priorities“. https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4071371/statement-by-performing-the-duties-of-deputy-secretary-of-defense-robert-g-sale/
The good news is that the taxpayer won’t be funding solar powered tanks & pronoun training. The not so good news is that the money will be used to
fill the coffers of the MICpay for the Iron Dome for America boondoggle.Good. Needs to be cut in half.
Okay, here is my $.002 worth. We have 653 generals in our military right now. We had only 23 generals in 1939 prior to the outbreak of WWII. Despite all their best efforts by our feckless elites to set off WWIII, this is technically a peacetime, volunteer military … why the hell do we need all these generals?
I have had family members in the military, so this comes from personal knowledge:
Unlike our European and Canadian allies, where the families stay home and the military personnel are deployed to different bases all over the world, the DOD pays to uproot and move military families to bases all over the world (unless serious fighting breaks out there)
In many cases, these families were uprooted every year or two, making it impossible for a military brat to enter a school district in kindergarten and graduate from high school there.
The irony is that, despite these moves, the military is constantly deployed on TDY (temporary duty) to remote locales part of the time anyway.
All these moves kept military spouses from achieving any tenure at any job they worked at, if they even bothered to work because of the constant moves. They kept these military families from buying any homes and building equity. They also isolated military families without the connections and close-by relatives as a support network.
Not to mention the damage done to any property (which did not fall off the moving trucks) from move to move to move.
The draft wasn’t abolished until 1974, but even if it hadn’t been, all that was needed for the USA to do was establish a large national guard, drafting men to go to boot camp every year and be weekend warriors to be ready to be called up IF and ONLY IF there was any major conflict.
There was no need to get involved in all these “police actions.” Part of me thinks that the inspiration for many of them was the fact that it took WWII to get the country out of the Great Depression, there was a severe recession between the time the men marched home and the Rosie the Riveters were “encouraged” to leave work, get married and have children because, before we knew it, we had to get involved in Korea.
IMO, we would have been better off if, instead of hitting the panic button and starting up a new war every time there was an economic downturn, we took a deep breath, relaxed, and focused on developing peace time industries.
It seemed every time the USA came up with something new, it took less than a decade to be outsourced to Japan and Korea and China. Televisions, radios, VCRs, etc all started here. It’s like all we have left are munitions factories. We have become nothing more than Merchants of Death.
In the meantime, we are paying countries to keep bases available to deploy our people to in order to defend them. They have had great social welfare programs – so great that they have proved a big magnet to third world migrants – but I digress.
In the USA, we have this Orwellian-sounding “Affordable Care Act” Obama plan where you pay a lot for virtually no healthcare coverage whatsoever and they keep warning us that Socially Security, Medicaid, and Medicare will be insolvent in about a decade.
I honestly believe that we didn’t even need to get rid of military conscription. If we had limited our military to a huge National Guard with military-aged men going through boot camp every year and one weekend every other month to drill to keep them in shape and battle ready in case something wicked broke out and simply beefed up our Coast Guard and border guards, we’d be fine.
Moreover, NATO should have ended when the Soviet Union did, Russia and the former Warsaw Pact countries should have been invited to join the European Union (or Common Market) back then so that we could have lowered our profile in Europe.
I honestly believe Europe wouldn’t have been so damned feckless regarding bringing in Third World immigrants without the safety net we provided them. In the back of their complacent little minds, they thought if the Muslims and Africans got too rowdy, well American soldiers could evict them.
So, yeah. I think the focus should be cutting the military by at least fifty percent is a very, very good start.
$50 billion dollars would be enough to actually defend the continental United States because the U. S. Air Force and Navy could shoot down or sink any transport planes or ships bringing foreign troops across the two oceans to try invade and occupy the country. Any additional deterrence would be provided by the submarines that carry medium range nuclear warheads.
In other words, cutting the Defense Department budget 95 percent would not in actual in fact leave us vulnerable to any other country. Now additionally close ALL military bases on foreign soil, and stop either instigating or supplying foreign wars, becoming a live and let live good neighbor, and you will never need the War Machine ever again.
Thinking and acting outside the box instead of as the Empire of Evil is really not so hard. That any “dissident “ would claim we still need to be Smedley Butler’s Gangsters for Capitalism is sheer nonsense. I’m talking to you, Aryan Globalist Bro.