Nine months into the second Trump administration, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s effort to shrink and reshape the Pentagon’s civilian workforce has netted a reduction of more than 60,000 employees, or about 7.6 percent, comfortably reaching the 5- to 8-percent goal he set in March.

But while the Pentagon provided those numbers to Defense One , they provided few other details, leaving it hard to judge how the effort to cut payroll and redirect resources is going. Multiple officials declined to talk about various problems caused by the sweeping cuts and policy changes Hegseth ordered just weeks into his job. They also declined to comment on criticism by current and former employees who say the changes were ill-planned and have hurt productivity and morale among the country’s largest

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