Pentagon creates permanent team to hunt down waste

The U.S. Department of War is setting up a permanent team inside the Pentagon comptroller’s office to find programs and processes it considers wasteful, inefficient or duplicative and recommend cutting, merging or reshaping them, under a memo signed by Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg.

The new Force Agility and Streamlining Team, or FAST, will serve as the “foundation of an enduring institutional mechanism” to eliminate waste across the department, Feinberg wrote. The department announced the team on Sept. 25. It has not named the team’s director, said how many people it will employ or set a savings target.

FAST will be led by a director who reports directly to Jules W. Hurst III, the under secretary of war who serves as comptroller and chief financial officer. The team will work with the military departments, the Joint Staff, defense agencies and field activities to look for duplicative programs, unnecessary paperwork and approval steps, inefficient spending and offices that no longer contribute to the department’s mission. It will recommend eliminating, realigning, consolidating or modifying them, and department leaders will make the final decisions, the Department of War said.

“Success will be measured by results, not by another layer of process,” said Under Secretary of War Jules W. Hurst III. “If a program is duplicative, we should eliminate it. If a process can be streamlined, we should streamline it. And if resources can be put to better use supporting the warfighter, we have an obligation to make that happen.”

Placing the team in the comptroller’s office puts it next to the budget process, where program money is requested and allocated. The team’s first review and first recommendations have not been scheduled publicly.

FAST is the latest in a series of efficiency moves Feinberg has directed. In April 2025, he ordered a department-wide organizational review under the Workforce Acceleration and Recapitalization Initiative to cut layers of management and realign civilian jobs. This month, he signed a memo titled “Fostering One Strong Industrial Base” that directs the department to drop government-unique cost accounting standards in favor of the commercial accounting rules most companies already use, and to reduce audit and compliance demands on contractors.

The team’s creation came days before the start of fiscal 2027 on Oct. 1.