CNN
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The Pentagon is considering making significant cuts to the top of the US military as the Trump administration seeks to shrink the federal government, according to a briefing document obtained by CNN and a US defense official.
The plans under consideration include consolidating combatant commands, possibly eliminating a directorate that oversees development, training and education for the joint force, and halting the expansion of US Forces Japan.
Among the eye-catching measures being considered are merging European Command and Africa Command into a single command based in Stuttgart, Germany, and combining US Northern and Southern commands into a single AMERICOM command, according to the document obtained by CNN.
The document was prepared this month by US defense officials for senior leaders, as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has pushed the Pentagon and other federal agencies to make sweeping cuts to save money.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a video last month that DoD would be leaning on DOGE to help the department “find fraud, waste and abuse in the largest discretionary budget in the federal government.”
The US military’s current annual budget is over $800 billion.
“With DOGE, we are focusing as much as we can on headquarters and fat and top-line stuff that allows us to reinvest elsewhere,” Hegseth said at the time. Hegseth ordered the military in February to prepare plans to make drastic budget cuts over the next five years, with an exception for border security, according to a memo obtained by CNN.
The Pentagon has primarily focused in recent weeks on eliminating large numbers of civilian employees, with the ultimate goal of cutting 5-8% of the department’s civilian workforce, officials have said.
Merging the commands would be a significant move.
AFRICOM was created in 2007, primarily because officials at the time determined that Africa is a large enough region with enough of its own issues to merit its own command. NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM have always been distinct, meanwhile, because they focus on different security priorities — NORTHCOM on homeland defense and cooperation with Canada and Mexico, and SOUTHCOM on Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the surrounding waters.
The briefing document acknowledges that consolidating the commands could present a risk and create an “increased scope of control and operations for the combatant commander,” and that there will be “political risk” associated with shuttering commands.
Consolidating them could save the Pentagon about $330 million over five years, the document says.
The potential cost-saving measures were first reported by NBC News.
Another option to cut costs is to stop the planned expansion of US Forces Japan, the document says. That could save about $1.1 billion in personnel and command and control upgrades, it notes, but could also create “political risk” for the US in Japan and reduce the scope of command and control in the Pacific.
The Biden administration moved to revamp and modernize its military forces in Japan last year as part of a deepening cooperation with Tokyo amid increased threats from China.
The document also proposes significant cuts to the Joint Staff, including “divesting” from the J7, a Joint Staff Directorate that oversees joint training and education for the services; firing nearly 400 civilians working in Joint Staff’s future operations cell, cyber, and training; and moving hundreds of Joint Staff employees to a base in Suffolk, Virginia.
Another option is to eliminate the Joint Information Operations Warfare Center, which the document describes as “redundant.” JIOWC was created by US Strategic Command in 2005 to help execute the US military’s information operations.
These cuts could result in savings of around $1 billion over five years, the document says but could also result in the “loss of key trained staff and experts either by elimination or re-location.”
