Department of Defense

The Department of Defense affirm that its DOGE staff will be hired directly to the agency and will not be detailed from elsewhere in the government.

An unidentified DOGE team holds a kickoff meeting with DoD staff at the Pentagon.

DoD agencies are ordered to provide lists of probationary employees to DOGE. Previously, defense, security and intelligence agencies have been exempted from many of the executive orders that constrained staffing or contracting.

Patrick George, Jim Hickey, Mike Slagh, and Yinon Weiss start as at DOD.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth releases a video stating that he met with DOGE about cuts to the agency. He states that many of them are veterans.

Owen West starts as Financial Strategist at DOD.

Justin Fulcher detailed from VA to DOD

A Forbes article identifies Justin Fulcher as one of the DOGE staffers in the Pentagon and questions the veracity of his entrepeneurial background.

Elon Musk visits the National Security Agency (NSA) to meet with its top administrator, General Timothy Haugh

During a discussion on how to strip grants from the University of Pennsylvania and San Jose State, GSA FAS Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum sends an email to coordinate grant freezes from DOD, DHS and the EPA. He includes DOGE staffers Kyle Schutt, Adam Hoffman and Kathryn Armstrong Loving as the recipients of these requests.

Elon Musk arrives at the Pentagon for a meeting with leadership, reportedly to discuss DOGE’s involvement at the agency.

Federal staff at the DOD are sent an email offering them another chance for a deferred resignation if they enroll within the next week or so from the email.

The head and deputy leader of the NSA are both relieved of their command by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly lashed out at Yinon Weiss for seeming to overstep his authority. The altercation was apparently triggered by Justin Fulcher storming out of a meeting with Weiss because he thought that Weiss has reported him to the Pentagon’s police service.

DOGE staff are reportedly examining Navy’s enterprise software licenses under the direction of the Departmeny of Defense CIO.

Luke Farritor uses his admin access to lock out all government officials at multiple agencies from using grants.gov to issue new grants. Instead, all grants must now be sent to a new email address which will be reviewed by DOGE staffers before grants can be posted.

Claiming that he knew of warrantless wiretapping from the NSA, Justin Fulcher pressured Defense Secretary Hegseth’s Chief of Staff and personal legal counsel to let him run an investigation into leaking at the Pentagon. Once he was included, it was clear there was no such evidence, but it had led to several key roles being fired. Justin Fulcher denied this account when reached for comment.

All 14 current members of the Pentagon’s pre-existing Defense Digital Service team announce a mass resignation after weeks of being sidelined and frustrated with DOGE’s efforts at the agency.

Justin Fulcher starts as Senior Advisor at DOD.

In a retaliation against the university coordinated by GSA, grants for Harvard University from DOD, HUD, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education are all terminated. There were 200 grants from DOD alone. The stated reasons varied but included that they no longer effectuated the administration’s priorities or directly accusing Harvard of fostering antisemitism on campus.

Pentagon staff are told they now no longer have to submit the Five Things email, but they are now tasked with a mandatory exercise to submit one thing that improves efficiency or reduces waste.

In an email to agency partners, the operators of grants.gov declare that the revised mechanism added in April that routed all Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) through a DOGE email address has been reversed. Instead, agencies are to return to using the tool like that did previously. This doesn’t necessarily mean that DOGE or political appointees will not be reviewing grants, but they have no longer locked other users out of the system.

The Department of Defense announced that it would immediately stop ingesting and sharing data from 3 microwave-imaging satellites with NOAA’s National Hurricane Center. This imaging is used to prevent “sunrise surprises” by allowing forecasters to monitor hurricanes at night. The change is expected to degrade the quality of hurricane forecasts.

The head of acquisition for the Department of Defense orders that all new contract and task orders for IT consulting, management services, and advisory and assistance support must be approved by the DOGE team embedded within the DOD before they will be granted.

The Pentagon releases a memo calling for “drone dominance,” including increasing manufacturing, embedding drones within armed units and assuming more risk in developing new technologies. The memo is signed by Pete Hegseth, but it was disributed with a DOGE Controlled tag and revealed the appointment of Owen West as the chief point of contact. This is a marked departure from DOGE’s spending control and personnel reduction efforts at the agency.

The Air Force contacts media to report that it has cut $10.4 billion in costs after DOGE reviewed over 500 contracts and 50 business systems. The bulk of this savings came from cancelling the Department Air Force Strategic Transformation Support (DAFSTS) Contract for $4.8 billion in avoided costs. This however was an umbrella contract for a wide variety of IT modernization and consulting services, for which money had not been allocated, meaning that this tally might be affected by the same fuzzy double-counting and hypothetical savings that were an issue on the DOGE’s own tally of cost recovery.

Justin Fulcher leaves role as Senior Advisor at DOD (exits govt. service)

After a rocky few months in the Defense Secretary’s office, Scott Fulcher resigns from his position. He claims he always intended to only spend six months in government.

Owen West promoted at DOD

Yinon Weiss leaves role at DOD (exits govt. service)

The Press Secretary for the Pentagon affirms to reporters that DOGE is going to continue its work at the agency for the forseeable future.

Jack Stein starts as Senior Advisor at DOD.

The Navy removes the head of the Office of Naval Research and places Rachel Riley in the role, despite the fact that she has no experience with the Navy. She was working on DOGE operations within HHS and her prior experience was with McKinsey.

Rachel Riley starts as Chief of Naval Research at DOD.

The DOGE team at the Pentagon is reported to be leading efforts to change how the military procures and uses drones and is expected to submit a report to leadership in the coming weeks. One of their goals is reportedly to acquire 30,000 drones in the next few months before ramping up further. The team’s work is being led by Owen West, who also co-authored a drone memo in June.

In an end of year memo, the Defense Information Systems Agency reports that disruptions due to DOGE’s direct targeting and pushing of the deferred resignation program resulted in a critical loss of staff that affected the ability of the department to conduct operations and obtain software. In one example, a senior contracting officer’s departure even led to a lapse in an important cloud-computing contract.

Gavin Kliger starts as Chief Data Officer at DOD.

Owen West is named as the new head of the Defense Innovation Unit at the Department of Defense. He has been the head of the DOGE team at the Pentagon and is expected to take over his new position in February or March.

The head of the Pentagon’s division for Responsible AI announces his resignation in a LinkedIn post. He stepped down over concerns that safety and governance were being sidelined in the Department of Defense’s push to expand AI usage. He also had circulated memos critical of xAI’s Grok model for its security and ethics.

Although his official position of Chief Data Officer had not yet been formally announced, Gavin Kliger is copied on an email between the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, the undersecretary for research and engineering of the Department of Defense about a potential agreement for Anthropic usage at the agency.

The Department of Defense names Gavin Kliger as its Chief Data Officer, overseeing aspects of the Pentagon’s AI strategy and coordination with private AI firms. The press release also stated that Mr. Kliger also oversaw the launch of the GenAI.mil site as well as the Drone Dominance program that involved other DOGE staffers.

Owen West promoted to Team Lead at DOD

Owen West leaves role at DOD

Democrats on the House Armed Services committee sharply questioned Pentagon cybersecurity staff about reports that DOGE cuts had severely diminished the cyberdefense capacity at the Department of Defense. Government officials denied that there were any issues.

Jack Stein leaves role as Senior Advisor at DOD (exits govt. service)