Trump administration plans to cut Pentagon budget by third in 5 years - Washington Post
US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has ordered plans to cut the defence budget by 8% annually over the next five years.
This was reported by The Washington Post, Censor.NET informs with reference to European Pravda.
Hegseth asks to prepare options for reducing Pentagon spending by 24 February and provides a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants to remove from the budget.
"These include operations on the southern border of the United States, nuclear and missile defence modernisation, and the purchase of unilateral drones and other munitions," the report says.
The intention to cut ‘billions of dollars’ in defence spending was previously personally supported by Donald Trump.
An 8% annual cut over five years means that the budget should be reduced by about 34% over this period. This would be the largest such cut since 2013.
According to The Washington Post, there is a broad consensus in Congress that significant defence spending is necessary to deter threats, particularly from China and Russia.
At the same time, US politicians have also raised claims about the effectiveness of the US defence establishment, for example, due to billions of dollars ‘lost’ as a result of errors in the accounting of weapons sent to Ukraine.
The Pentagon's budget for 2025 is about $850 billion.
