GAO says Pentagon workforce cuts and a hiring freeze have left major weapons programs short-staffed, risking delays and eroding acquisition expertise.
Many of the U.S. military’s major acquisition programs are struggling with short staffing and hiring challenges following massive cuts to the federal workforce last year, a federal watchdog said in a new report published Thursday.
The Government Accountability Office’s annual review of America’s 48 costliest and most complex weapons programs, ranging from nuclear missiles to training jets, found that the Defense Department hasn’t been able to fill gaps in its civilian acquisition workforce caused by scores of voluntary departures under the Trump administration’s Deferred Resignation Program and budget cuts.
More than 48,000 DoD staff — more than 6 percent of its workforce — were approved to leave under DRP as of June 2025, the watchdog said. Deferred resignations sought to let federal employees opt out of their jobs rather than be laid off in the administration’s push to curb waste.
Exits from 37 of the Pentagon’s key procurement programs have depleted institutional knowledge, threatened work on critical military vehicles and munitions and hurt the department’s long-term staffing pipeline. The federal hiring freeze has also made it more difficult for more than half of the program offices that were studied to bring in new people.
One office lost nearly 40% of its core personnel in 2025, but could backfill just one-third of those spots, the report said. Another lost 31 people to DRP, or almost 6 percent of its workforce.
“One program lost seven civilian positions due to the DRP, and it has not been able to backfill due to the ongoing hiring freeze,” GAO said. “The program distributes the same work to the fewer remaining people, and those employees work across weekends to ensure the reductions have not resulted in tangible delays or deficiencies in executing the program.”
Bringing on qualified acquisition staff is challenging even under the best circumstances, thanks to a limited pool of candidates with niche expertise, higher private-sector pay and a drawn-out federal hiring process that can last at least several months.
GAO noted one program has had to advertise jobs multiple times before someone qualified applies. Another complained that it can take a year for a new hire to learn enough about their work to contribute to the team.
Last year, DoD pledged to remove up to 8% of its nonuniformed employees to “align its civilian workforce with national security priorities.”
“We are confident that we can absorb [DRP] removals without detriment to our ability to continue the mission,” a senior defense official said in March 2025.
Eight months later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rolled out a plan that prioritizes recruiting and retaining highly skilled acquisition staff and growing the department’s expertise over time.
“The effects of the changes to DoD’s acquisition workforce have yet to be fully determined,” GAO said. “We will continue to monitor DoD’s efforts to transform its acquisition workforce.”
Rapid acquisition
The watchdog also argued that the military’s fast-tracked weapons development programs should rely more heavily on mature technologies to avoid delays. DoD is undermining its own goal of speeding up delivery times by jamming unfinished tech through an accelerated process that leaves the equipment too green to field, GAO said.
Using only components that are already fully developed, or spinning off immature elements that are holding a program back, can help the department hit the turnaround time it wants, the watchdog advised. The department agreed.
GAO has raised similar issues about Pentagon procurement for years. While the department has concurred with its recommendations, the watchdog said, it has made little progress toward achieving them.
Military acquisition remains on GAO’s “high-risk list” of government initiatives that are most vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse.
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