Hegseth gutted Pentagon office that said it would oversee testing of Golden Dome missile defense system

By Natasha Bertrand, CNN

(CNN) — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the gutting of a Pentagon office shortly after it disclosed that it would be overseeing the testing of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense system and the programs associated with the massive, multi-billion dollar project, multiple officials familiar with the matter told CNN.

At the end of April, the little known Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation drafted and disseminated a memo to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and other DoD offices that put Golden Dome on its oversight list, in line with DoD instructions and laws requiring that a major defense acquisition program be tested before being fielded, the officials said.

Days later, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency asked the office for a meeting. Musk’s company, SpaceX, is among the companies vying for a role in developing Golden Dome.

DOGE representatives asked DOT&E officials more about what they did and their plans for this year, officials said, and seemed surprised that much of the office’s work was required by law. But there were no outward signs that the office was on the chopping block.

On Wednesday, though, DOT&E employees were abruptly summoned to a meeting at the Pentagon and told that the office would be cut to just 30 people, down from over 100, the officials told CNN. Contractors would also no longer be assigned to support the office, per the new guidance.

A defense official told CNN that they believe the administration was concerned about DOT&E conducting independent oversight of Golden Dome, and the problems it might uncover in the process.

“This administration only wants wins. They don’t want bad news and they’re getting bad news on all sorts of fronts,” the official said. “DOT&E is an honest broker of information. We report the truth and that’s all we do.”

Democratic Sen. Jack Reed, the Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Thursday that he is concerned that the move to gut the office “appears retaliatory, driven by Mr. Hegseth’s opposition to some of DOT&E’s recent, legally required oversight decisions.”

“With staffing reduced to a skeleton crew and limited contractor backing, DOT&E may be unable to provide adequate oversight for critical military programs, risking operational readiness and taxpayer dollars,” Reed said, calling the decision “politically motivated interference.”

Asked for comment, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told CNN, “The Department’s reorganization of the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation will return DOT&E to its statutory intent as an oversight body and eliminate duplicative efforts. This decision has nothing to do with Golden Dome and everything to do with rooting out redundancies.”

But officials CNN spoke to argued that DOT&E is not redundant—rather, it has a unique position as an independent auditor of equipment and systems used by all of the services across the military. It also does not have an enforcement mechanism and is not legally able to shut anything down if it uncovers problems when testing and evaluating various systems.

Trump formally announced the plans for the project last week, and $25 billion has already been carved out in next year’s defense budget for Golden Dome.

But the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the US may have to spend more than $500 billion – over the course of 20 years – to develop a layered missile defense system of the size and scale Trump has demanded. The system will likely encompass over 100 separate programs and require establishing a large, interconnected network of government agencies and private contractors.

Defense officials and industry executives largely agree that it will take years before a system like Golden Dome is fully operational, CNN has reported. But the Trump administration is already on the clock to prove that the concept can work in order to justify the future funding for the project.

In a video posted to X on Wednesday, Hegseth said the office was restructured to allow the services to “go faster with the capabilities that they need.”

Another defense official said DOT&E had no intention of slowing down the project. But they did want to ensure it worked properly, and that it would be survivable and lethal against realistic threats.

“It’s much cheaper and faster to find out problems quickly and get data as early as possible so we can determine whether the program is going to be effective,” the official said.

The first official said that the massive reduction in staff and the fact that contractors will no longer be assigned to DOT&E will lead to some programs dropping off the office’s radar and getting no scrutiny at all.

“It’s concerning that there will be certain programs out there with potentially a lot of money being spent,” this official said. “And we’ll have no idea if it’s being tested properly.”

CNN’s Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.

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