Warren to Hegseth: Gutting Military Weapons Testing Office Could Violate the Law, “Will Cost Service Members’ Lives and Waste Taxpayer Dollars”
“This decision jeopardizes the safety and military effectiveness of every weapons program overseen by [the weapons testing office].”
“Your reported refusal to publicly release or provide Congress any study justifying this change raises questions about whether such a study even exists.”
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, wrote to the Secretary of the Department of Defense (DoD), Pete Hegseth, criticizing his drastic cuts to the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) Office, which provides oversight and testing of weapons to ensure they will be safe to operate and effective in combat.
“For over 40 years this office has provided critical oversight over U.S. weapons programs…I urge you to reverse this decision, which will cost service members’ lives and waste taxpayer dollars, immediately,” said Senator Warren.
The independent testing office was created in response to concerns that the military services were failing to adequately test weapons and that Congress was not receiving the information necessary to conduct oversight over weapons programs. In May 2025, Secretary Hegseth issued a memo directing DOT&E to “immediately eliminate any non-statutory” functions of the office, reducing the office’s staff by 74 percent and slashing its budget by almost 80 percent.
“I am concerned that these reductions would violate the law, cutting so deep that the office would no longer be able to meet its statutory functions,” wrote Senator Warren.
Since its creation, DOT&E has made sure that urgently needed equipment is safe and effective. At the beginning of the Afghan surge, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said “75 percent of all casualties were due to” improvised explosive devices (IEDs). DOT&E’s testing of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles helped save more than 2,000 American lives. In another instance, DOT&E’s testing revealed a defect in the Marine Corps’ Enhanced Combat Helmet “presented a serious risk of injury or death” and risks of snapping the necks of lightweight pilots ejecting from an F-35.
The results of ignoring or forgoing DOT&E’s testing can be deadly for service members. In 2000, DOT&E found that the V-22 Osprey “was not operationally suitable, primarily because of reliability, maintainability, availability, human factors, and interoperability issues.” Despite the office’s warning, the Pentagon continued to fly the aircraft, which eventually killed 64 service members, including two Massachusetts constituents, Air Force Staff Sergeant Jake Galliher and Marine Corps Captain Ross A. Reynolds.
Past testing by DOT&E has also revealed that Army battlefield communications were vulnerable to hacking and that DoD’s “cyber posture remains at risk.”
“If the cuts are made, it remains unclear whether decisions about which programs to prioritize for oversight will be made based on objective criteria or by program managers who would hide significant program failures from Congress and the public,” Senator Warren continued.
To date, Secretary Hegseth has not publicly released or provided any study or review justifying the cuts to DOT&E, raising concerns about whether such a study exists.
Senator Warren asked Secretary Hegseth to provide the following by July 2, 2025: any study or analyses justifying the cuts, a list of DOT&E’s current oversight list, whether the office will continue its cyber assessment program, whether the Golden Dome project should be excluded from oversight, and whether the Pentagon required DOT&E staff to meet with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
###
Next Article Previous Article