Congressional leaders are demanding answers from self-styled “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth after the Defense Department pulled all reports from the public website of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), the independent Pentagon office that tests new Pentagon weapons systems to ensure that they work as advertised. “One of the most important functions of [the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation] is to provide transparency about the safety and effectiveness of major weapon systems,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) in a letter to Hegseth, this month, reported Defense News. “A key element of this function is the release of publicly available annual reports that detail findings by DOT&E to make sure critical deficiencies are fixed so service members are not harmed or killed,” they added. Those reports are now available only to those with a military Common Access Card, effectively locking out even the U.S. Congress, for which DOT&E’s reports have been an important part of its oversight function.
Pentagon officials claim that those reports have to be kept secret, because they could be used by adversaries to learn about U.S. military vulnerabilities. But they were locked up after Hegseth issued a memo directing the DOT&E to significantly reduce its workforce and budget in the name of cost-savings. In turn, the office’s staff was cut by some 74% and its budget by nearly 80%. The Defense Department subsequently proposed a $1.5 trillion budget for 2027.
In an interview with Military Times, Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense, or TCS, called it “suspicious” that officials gutted the DOT&E office prior to proposing a massive spending increase.
Murphy identified the Golden Dome Missile Defense System as an example of a project that warrants more oversight. “They know that missile defense in general—and I think in particular, the space-based interceptors they want for this program—are not going to perform well in real tests,” he added.
