SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The Pentagon has announced it will cut its budget by some $50 billion each year for the next five years. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the money saved will shift to fund his priorities - more drones and submarines, military assistance along the U.S. border with Mexico and building up bases for American forces in the Pacific to help counter China. But Hegseth has been less clear about where in the military budget he will get those tens of billions of dollars in savings. Joining us now to wade through it all is NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Hey, Tom.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: Fifty billion dollars sounds like a lot, but then again, we're talking about the Pentagon, which is - what? - like, $900 billion each year. Do we have any sense of where Hegseth will find these savings?
BOWMAN: Well, not really. A statement put out last night by a senior Pentagon official said that Hegseth has directed a review to search for what they call, quote, "low-impact and low-priority Biden legacy programs." So no details of what they're talking about. So they want to focus on the ones you just noted - drones, submarines and also, Scott, more missile defense and nuclear weapons upgrades.
What we do know is that the Pentagon will find at least some of those cuts by firing - get this - tens of thousands of civilian employees. We're told notices to employees could start as early as today. And one estimate is 55,000 and - including some 6,000 just in the Navy department alone. There some 700,000 civilian employees at the Pentagon and the defense agencies, such as the top-secret National Security Agency, which collects communications on adversaries.
Now, one defense analyst I spoke with says the new priorities seem to focus on the Air Force and the Navy, so you could see, Scott, cuts in the Army - for example, trimming the number of, let's say, armored vehicles and the number of soldiers, which now stands at about 450,000 troops.
DETROW: OK. So just underscore, we're talking about tens of thousands of possible layoffs that could start right away. That will be an ongoing story. But let's shift here, and let's look more closely at these new priorities. I'm curious, what your sources, what analysts are saying about them?
BOWMAN: Well, as many of us know, drones are the wave of the present. Look at Ukraine. Both Ukraine and Russia are using drones effectively in the battlefield, and the U.S. is gaining a lot of lessons. Former Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley recently told NPR that Ukraine is a glimpse of the future of warfare with the use of short- and medium-range drones to support combat operations.
And also, submarines - many analysts and some Democratic lawmakers have pointed out that the U.S. must increase its number of submarines, which the Biden administration cut. Submarines are, of course, more stealthy than a surface ship. I'm told the U.S. is a generation ahead of China when it comes to submarines. Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, said undersea warfare is one of the few areas where the U.S. retains a competitive edge over the Chinese military.
DETROW: Do we expect these cuts to get approved by Congress? And I'm also wondering - will they even be enough to fund all of these new priorities?
BOWMAN: You know, it's really uncertain. I was in touch with a Democratic aide on Capitol Hill who said his Republican colleagues were upset when they saw this list of 17 priorities. Of course, Congress is a bill-payer here. So we'll see if they go along with these cuts and priorities, especially if it means their states or districts lose out. So we'll just have to see.
And, you know, one of these priorities is an Iron Dome for the U.S., echoing what Israel has to shoot down rockets and medium-range missiles. The U.S. has a limited amount of missile defense for intercontinental ballistic missiles, Scott, but it's not very reliable. And if they do do it, you're looking at least $100 billion a year, one analyst told me.
DETROW: That's NPR's Tom Bowman. Thanks so much.
BOWMAN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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