Behemoth Golden Dome can face a meticulous examination of Trump’s pentagon

The decision of the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, this week, to reduce more than half of the personnel of the Pentagon test and evaluation office was motivated, in part, by the plans of the test supervision office for the $ 175 billion in the Trump administration of $ 175 Gilded dome Anti -missile defense project, several sources for Defense News said.

In a memo published on Wednesday, the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, announced his intention to Restructure the office of the Director of Operational Test and EvaluationKnown as dowry, and reduce its staff from 94 people to 46 – a mixture of civilians, soldiers and a senior manager. The memo also ended all entrepreneurs in the office.

The decision aroused concerns of certain Democrats in the Congress, notably a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee Rose jackD-Ri, who called the “reckless and harmful” move.

“With personnel reduced to a skeletal crew and limited support between entrepreneurs, DOT & e may be unable to provide adequate monitoring of critical military programs, risk the operational preparation and taxpayers’ dollars,” Reed said in a statement. “This type of politically motivated interference undermines independent surveillance and leaves the fighters and the public more vulnerable to non -tested and potentially imperfect systems.”

Hegseth said that the reorganization is linked to the Pentagon “America First” strategy and was supported by an internal examination which identified “redundant and non -statutory functions” within the office. The analysis, he said, revealed that the reduction of staff could save more than $ 300 million a year.

But several sources familiar with the decision and have granted anonymity to speak freely told Defense News that the circumstances are more complicated than the scenario that the secretary described in his note. They underlined the lasting tensions between the military services and the office, have delighted in the last months by an atmosphere of rapid and programmatic success which is antithetical to the demanding mission to verify the demands of performance over time and under variable conditions.

The sources have also cited the frustration of the Directorate of the Recent Dot & E Dot to add Golden Dome to his “surveillance list” as the final provocation.

“It’s a perfect storm,” said a source.

Compulsory monitoring

The DOT & E office was created by the congress to provide independent surveillance of the main defense acquisition programs. Its leaders are held by law to approve the test plans and declare the results for all programs of the Ministry of Defense whose total research and development cost exceeds $ 525 million – in dollars of 2020 – or whose purchases should cost more than $ 3 billion.

The list of efforts under the Dot & e Outight currently offers more than 250 programs, including the F-35 Fight Fighterthe army Long -range hypersonic weapon And the navy AEGIS modernization program.

The role of the office as a supervisor means that his recommendations are sometimes unpopular to military service heads and the main defense entrepreneurs. But the objective of its rigorous and often arduous validation is to prevent the ministry from moving defective systems that could endanger the military.

The cost of Golden Dome – estimated at $ 175 billion in the next three years – And its complexity makes it a clear candidate for dowry surveillance, according to sources.

The process of initiation of the dowry surveillance of a program is quite simple, but when the interim director of Dot & e, Raymond O’Toole, informed the senior leaders in a recent memo which he planned to add golden dome to the list, the decision aroused an unusual level of control.

The officials feared that the participation of the office slows down the program and increases its costs. They finally raised their concerns in the White House.

This additional attention seems to be linked to President Donald Trump’s interest in the program, said a source, noting that the office was informed that the program “should succeed for Mr. Trump”.

Pet Project

Golden Dome became the president’s signature defense project at the start of his second term. In a memo of January 27, he ordered the Pentagon to write a plan for a Network in layers of interceptors and spatial sensors To detect, follow and defeat a range of missile threats.

Initially calling the “Iron Dome for America” project after the Israeli anti -missile defense system of the same name, Trump renamed it “Golden dome” – A nod to his vision of a “golden age in America” ​​and perhaps his own penchant for precious metal.

At an oval office meeting last week, flanked by Hegseth and a spatial force general – as well as multiple images representing a map of the United States covered with gold – Trump said that the Pentagon would provide “the best system ever built” before the end of its mandate.

Although there is a large agreement between defense officials and external experts that the United States needs a more targeted investment in its anti-missile defense architecture, Trump calendar and cost projections have raised the eyebrows.

With real details on the still thin project, some have wondered if the largest technological elevators of Golden Dome are achievable and were worth the long -term cost.

“I do not think that we should read a lot about the figure of $ 175 billion because no details or warning has been provided,” said Todd Harrison, analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “I want to see something on paper that shows what is included, what is not included and the delay in the estimate.”

This week’s dowry cuts probably mean that the office will be under-strength to supervise all the main programs of the Ministry of Defense, not to mention the Golden Dome.

A familiar source with the office assumed that the staff “radically reduced” could allow the Pentagon to get away with a thinness on the office surveillance list.

Surveillance of reduced tests could allow Golden Dome to move faster, but sources said that it would be worrying of a program with such high ambitions to escape a meticulous examination.

“It would be hundreds of warheads that arrive with all kinds of countermeasures, cyber attacks,” said another source. “It is generally beyond the scope of a program and a service test office to be able to orchestrate all of this.”