WASHINGTON — Two democratic lawmakers are raising concerns that the Pentagon’s weapons testing office has reduced the number of programs under its remit and will no longer provide oversight of several space and missile defense efforts that could potentially be linked to Golden Dome.
The Defense Department has cut 94 programs overseen by its office of the director of operational test and evaluation (DOT&E) — a 37 percent reduction of the 251 programs previously on the list, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New Jersey Rep. Donald Norcross said in an Oct. 15 letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“To date you have refused to provide any analysis to justify or support these reductions,” said the lawmakers, who are members of the House and Senate armed services committees. “We remain concerned these reckless decisions undermine readiness and will result in substantial waste of taxpayer dollars while putting servicemembers’ lives at risk. We urge you to immediately reverse the decision to cut the size and scope of this office, and to restore oversight to the nearly 100 programs from the DOT&E oversight list.”
The Pentagon declined to comment on Warren’s letter, with a spokesperson stating that the department does not comment on congressional correspondence.
The lawmakers called out several space and missile defense programs that had been removed from the oversight list, including the Enterprise Space-Based Missile Warning, Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture Tranche 2 Enterprise, Space-Based Infrared Systems Survivable and Endurable Evolution, and Upgraded Early Warning Radar. While the Defense Department has not publicly laid out which systems will be a part of the Golden Dome missile shield — one of the administration’s top defense priorities —Warren and Norcross note that some of the programs eliminated from the list “could enable the Golden Dome architecture” by providing tracking and data transport capabilities needed by the missile defense system.
“If homeland missile defense is truly a top priority for the Department, rigorous testing and oversight is vital to ensure the systems are integrated and that funding is not being wasted on systems that do not tie into the broader architecture,” Warren and Norcross said.
Established in 1983, the DOT&E office provides the Pentagon with an independent assessment of whether a weapons program is meeting performance and safety requirements — often supplying a more critical view than the services’ own program offices. In May, Hegseth laid out a plan to restructure DOT&E, slashing its staff to 30 civilian positions, with no more than one senior executive service member and 15 assigned military personnel posts. Warren, in July, said the office is now operating with just 26 percent of its staff and 20 percent of its previous budget.
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Days after the shakeup, Defense News reported that the cuts at the office were primarily driven over concerns about DOT&E’s plans to provide oversight of Golden Dome.
In response to the changes at DOT&E, Warren issued a letter to Hegseth in June expressing concerns over the personnel cuts, requesting more information about what analysis had been done to substantiate the office’s restructure and an updated version of DOT&E’s oversight list.
In an Aug. 5 response to Warren, Carroll Quade, who Hegseth put in charge of the office, stated that the department had conducted a “comprehensive internal review” that found “redundant, non-essential, non statutory functions” within DOT&E.
“The Golden Dome for America program is a DoD priority. The DOT&E will work with the relevant stakeholders to determine the appropriate level of oversight for the Golden Dome for America program,” he wrote at the time.
The Aug. 5 response to Warren included a DOT&E oversight list that include 251 programs, but two days later a new list — dated July 31— was posted on the office’s website that showed 94 programs had been removed. Warren and Norcross said that timing raises concerns that the department’s initial response to Warren “was purposely inaccurate.”
The two lawmakers requested that the Pentagon respond by Oct. 29 to a list of questions about why nearly 100 programs were cut from the oversight list as well as how the department would ensure the operational effectiveness of those weapon systems.
“If taxpayers are investing at the very least $74.5 billion into new weapon systems removed from DOT&E’s oversight list, DoD must ensure that they work for our servicemembers,” they wrote. “The decision to further purge the DOT&E office by cutting nearly 100 programs from its oversight list jeopardizes military readiness, puts the safety of our servicemembers at risk, and increases the risk of waste and abuse of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.”