U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attends a joint news conference with Japan's Defense Minister Gen Nakatani at the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo Sunday, March 30, 2025. (Kiyoshi Ota/Pool Photo via AP)
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attends a joint news conference with Japan's Defense Minister Gen Nakatani at the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo Sunday, March 30, 2025. (Kiyoshi Ota/Pool Photo via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Defense Department is going to offer a new round of voluntary resignations and retirements to the civilian workforce, but details are slim.
In a brief memo, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon would “immediately†offer voluntary early retirements and begin another deferred resignation plan. He warned that “exemptions should be rare,†but provided no specifics on what the offers will look like or say whether they would go out to the entire civilian workforce of more than 900,000.
And, while he signed the memo on Friday, it wasn't released to Pentagon leaders until Monday, and there was no information on when or how those offers will be distributed and when the deadlines will be.
Hegseth in the memo said he wants to use the voluntary programs in order to “maximize participation so that we can minimize the number of involuntary actions that may be required.â€
The cuts are part of the broader effort by ’s Department of Government Efficiency Service to and .
In mid-March, a senior defense official said will be cut in , in an effort to reach the goal of a 5% to 8% cut in that workforce.
Fewer than 21,000 workers who took the first voluntary resignation offer are leaving in the coming months, the official said at the time, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide personnel details. In addition, the Pentagon hopes to slash about 6,000 positions each month by simply not replacing workers who routinely leave.
Officials have not said how many Defense Department civilians accepted the initial offer — also known as the “Fork in the Road†— but were turned down. In some cases supervisors deemed the employees essential to national security.
According to the new memo, service secretaries and other department leaders will provide a proposed new organizational chart with consolidated management, position titles and numbers "clearly depicted' by April 11.
