President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has been combing through various federal departments and agencies in search of waste, fraud, and abuse to be cut from federal spending, with mixed results thus far depending upon the cooperativeness of the assorted agencies and departments.

The Defense Department has been cooperating with DOGE's efforts, and Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth just signed a memo this week to officially eliminate more than a half a billion taxpayer dollars in wasteful and unnecessary spending, Fox News reported.

With an annual budget approaching nearly $1 trillion, however, and DOGE only recently getting started at the Pentagon, there will undoubtedly be even more uncovered examples of wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive spending for Hegseth to cut in the coming weeks and months.

Hegseth highlights $580+ million in cuts to wasteful spending

On Thursday, Sec. Hegseth posted a video to the X platform to give the American people an update on the DoD's combined efforts with DOGE to find and eliminate wasteful spending from the military's massive budget.

"Today, I'm signing a memo directing the termination of over $580 million in DoD contracts and grants that do not match the priorities of this president or this department," Hegseth said. "In other words, they are not a good use of taxpayer dollars. Ultimately, that's who funds us, and we owe you transparency and making sure we're using it well."

Another round of @DOGE findings here at the Department of Defense. pic.twitter.com/PSrHn8Zjlq

— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) March 20, 2025

Examples of wasteful spending to be cut

Sec. Hegseth proceeded to provide a few examples of what was to be cut, including a Human Resources software project that was supposed to cost $36 million and be completed within a year, but instead was still unfinished after eight years and had overrun the initial budget by an extra $280 million.

"So that's 780% over budget. We're not doing that anymore," he said.

The secretary then highlighted a batch of grants worth more than $360 million that were focused on issues like climate change and diversity, and included a grant to a university to develop "equitable AI and machine learning models." Hegseth quipped, "I need lethal machine learning models, not equitable machine learning models."

He also pointed out that tens of millions of taxpayer dollars would be saved by eliminating contracts with outside consultant services, information technology services, and the purchase of unused licenses, among other things.

DOGE is "working hard. We're working hard with them."

"So when you add it all up, $580 million in DoD contracts and grants DOGE is helping us cut today," Sec. Hegseth revealed, along with the running total of more than $800 million that had been cut since the coast-saving initiative began a few weeks ago.

Of DOGE, he said, "They're working hard. We're working hard with them. We appreciate the work that they're doing, and we have a lot more coming, so stay tuned."

The secretary's brief video update ended with him signing the memo to make the spending cuts "official," after which he added to the viewers, "We're gonna keep going, for you guys."

As for the broader efforts of DOGE across the board, it claims to have already saved at least $115 billion, or about $714 per U.S. taxpayer, through a combination of "asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions."