The Department of Government Efficiency has thrown the Pentagon’s strict culture off-kilter.
In a building split between military and civilian staff, chain of command is everything. But now, orders coming directly from the White House about personnel changes, policies and even specific programs have gone out to the entire force.
Without the usual input from high-ranking Pentagon and military leadership, many of these orders are being interpreted by units at all levels.
“Chain of command doesn’t think they’ll get a heads up when someone gets fired,” one Department of Defense employee said. “On internal channels, they’ll tell you they don’t know what’s going on.”
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Five sources at varying levels across the department told NOTUS that their leadership is still not informed on DOGE’s plan for civilian personnel. The possible impacts and second-order effects of the anticipated firings could strain department tactical training, logistics, procurement and other activities that civilian DOD employees largely execute, sources said.
While the White House only announced who was officially heading up DOGE just this week — Amy Gleason, a former senior adviser at the U.S. Digital Service, which is now DOGE, is the acting director of the office — it’s not clear who is heading up the group’s work at the Defense Department.
The Pentagon did not respond to an inquiry about the chain of command surrounding DOGE, and who — if anyone — had been informed about anticipated reductions in force.
“We have, through our staff, been contacting [the Pentagon] and asking them for all the details, but they’re not forthcoming,” Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services told NOTUS. “Some of this, I think, is: Nobody is really in charge.”
Officials at the department did confirm that DOGE personnel are on-site at the Pentagon and have been seen looking around the building for office space multiple times, but no information could be provided as to whom they report to or who in the department is responsible for their day-to-day activities.
Normal day-to-day operations have not yet been impacted by the White House or DOGE directives, but there is a sense of ambiguity around how they may be going forward, one tactical-level officer said.
The concern extends to lawmakers. Sen. Thom Tillis told NOTUS: “There’s just got to be a rational basis for ‘the anticipated firings.’ Anytime you do things on a broad basis, and I’ve done things similar to this in my business experience, you’ve always got to be ready to do remediation,” he said.
Tillis said that Elon Musk and his team should defer to department heads or consult with “effectively the CEO” of these large organizations rather than unilaterally making changes.
Sen. Mike Rounds said people have reached out to his office about how the process is going. “Look, we’re all concerned about it,” he said when asked about the possible impacts of firings. “But we know it’s critical that we move forward with fixing a bloated executive branch.”
Rounds is expecting to deal with the fallout after Musk’s Silicon Valley-style ‘move fast and break things’ approach is applied to the department. “We just want to help them pick up the pieces and get it back together again,” he said.
An officer working at one of the military service academies told NOTUS that their civilian instructor counterparts are feeling scared and uncertain because of the unilateral power Musk is wielding.
“These folks gravitate towards the mission that we have, and I think a lot of them gravitate towards the stability of government jobs, at least to some degree,” the officer said. “And when you throw that stability out the window, and the mission sort of comes into question — because we’re supposed to be a non-partisan organization and it seems like certain mandates are very politically charged — it causes these folks to say ‘None of this is the reason I came here.’”
While there aren’t yet signs that many of the civilian academic instructors are on the chopping block, they’ve received few assurances from leadership. Trump’s executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion have added to the uncertainty.
“I know a lot of civilians are sort of grappling with that as well, because a lot of them feel like, ‘Hey, if this is an academic institution that doesn’t value academic freedom or academic honesty, then, like, this isn’t the place I want to be,’” this officer said of his colleagues.
Civilians play a crucial role in continuity across the military, but especially at the service academies. The majority of officers across the Defense Department rotate every couple years, whereas the relative longevity of civilian staff maintains the reputation of the institutions.
Civilian staff described a dynamic where leadership is “very averse to communicating anything,” but in light of the Pentagon and other units’ lack of information, there’s very little to be said.
The lack of information reaches even the highest levels of the military, the Department of Defense employee said, describing leadership as “trying to do their best” with the very little information they have. Both rank-and-file civilian employees as well as higher-level leaders are receiving important information about Musk and DOGE through posts on X and news articles. The announcements and orders are coming through channels that more senior military officers have few touchpoints with — and there’s been no coordinated response to the orders.
Some in military leadership have acknowledged this lack of information, while others have maintained that they will have a say in DOGE’s process, sources told NOTUS.
“He’s causing havoc among government agencies,” Sen. Mark Kelly said of Musk on Monday evening just after voting to move Dan Driscoll’s appointment as Secretary of the Army forward in the Senate. “I had a military officer in my office 30 minutes ago who also got the email: ‘What are the five things you did this week?’ So that stuff is also filtering down to members of the military.”
A civilian employee at the Defense Department confirmed to NOTUS that they had received the “five bullets” email and that it was sent to most of the department. An active duty officer source told NOTUS they had not received the email.
Concerns about job security on the civilian side of the Defense Department are dominant, sources told NOTUS, whileleaders have made requests to “shield” civilian personnel from possible layoffs.
One department employee described it as having submitted a justification for why each employee added value to their team and generated work for the overall unit.
“And they were like, ‘Cool, have those been approved yet?’ And they’re like, ‘No, not yet,’” the academy officer told NOTUS. “They’re like, ‘Okay, cool. Then we’re gonna continue to, like, freak the hell out until we know for sure.’”
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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