Defense industry executives expect the Trump administration's cost-cutting advisory team will come for at least one billion-dollar Pentagon program by the end of 2025, with a former congressman saying it shouldn't stop there.
L3Harris CEO Christopher Kubasik asked a panel of “defense disruptors” at the annual McAleese and Associates conference -- including leaders at ShieldAI, Sierra Nevada, Palantir, Anduril and Kratos -- whether they think DOGE will terminate or truncate a Defense Department program worth $1 billion or more by the end of the calendar year.
“DOGE” refers to the Department of Government Efficiency -- an advisory group scheduled to sunset in July 2026 and tasked with cutting federal government spending, which is led by Elon Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur whose assets include social platform X, automotive company Tesla and spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX.
All panelists responded in the affirmative, with Mike Gallagher, head of defense at Palantir and former congressional representative for Wisconsin, pushing for more.
“There should be more than one,” Gallagher said.
Kratos and Sierra Nevada CEOs Eric DeMarco and Fatih Ozmen said “absolutely,” and “yes,” respectively -- one large DOD program would see its end at the hands of DOGE. Ryan Tseng, co-founder and president of ShieldAI and Christopher Brose, chief strategy officer and president at Anduril, said “yes,” as well.
Gallagher didn’t follow up with a specific number until Tseng prodded him, although it’s still unclear that was the specific figure he had in mind.
“More than one,” Tseng said, “six?”
“Yes,” Gallagher replied.
While Musk didn’t take the stage, SpaceX is considered a “disruptor” in the defense technology community as the recipient of multiple DOD contracts worth billions of dollars. The latest contract is an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity agreement from the Space Development Agency initially valued at $20,000 to prototype a proliferated low-earth orbit satellite for demonstration within the next year.
The panelists’ remarks come amid a turbulent time for the Pentagon’s budget process.
Under a yearlong continuing resolution passed into law Friday, the department is authorized to launch “new-start programs” and reallocate up to $8 billion. The topline allows for a $6 billion increase in spending compared to fiscal year 2024’s budget. Accounting for inflation, though, analysts say it’s effectively an $18 billion drop in buying power.
Also at play is a mid-February memorandum from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directing the department to develop a $50 billion list of budget “offsets” that can be cut from the unreleased fiscal year 2026 spending request and re-invested in new priorities, excluding 17 areas such as the munitions and energetics organic industrial base, one-way attack and autonomous systems, collaborative combat aircraft and more. Those offsets would account for approximately 8% of the FY-26 budget left behind by the Biden administration.