So, 5 days ago, Pete Hegseth rolled out something he’s calling Deal Team Six, a handpicked group of private sector negotiators he put inside the Pentagon specifically to stop cost overruns, hold defense contractors accountable, and make sure taxpayer money isn’t being wasted on weapons programs that go nowhere. That was 5 days ago.
Yesterday, at a congressional hearing, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro asked him whether his department did any analysis on the industrial base impact before cutting 5 billion dollars from Army Aviation, and he said he’d get back to her. So, let me get this straight. The guy who just launched a whole accountability task force couldn’t account for his own biggest budget decision. Let’s watch the video.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, the National Security Strategy says American National Power depends on strong industrial sector capable of meeting both peacetime and wartime production demands. And the National Defense Strategy directs DOD to, quote, supercharge the defense industrial base.
Uh, DOD’s uh 2027 budget overview appears to use that same framing. Yet, uh your department’s budget request cuts over 5 billion dollars from the industrial base in the aviation sector alone, effectively shutting down all current Army Aviation platforms. Uh, these are uh current production platforms the force relies on for lift, for sustainability, disaster response, homeland missions, etc.
Uh, how did the department arrive at the conclusion that reducing procurement for these Army Aviation platforms strengthens rather than weakens the aviation industrial base? Well, I very much appreciate that question, and I actually think it’s something we’re taking another look at. Uh, I think it’s not that every aspect of There are some very good things in the Army Transformation Initiative, and there are some things that we’ve needed to get another look at.
And so, I think you’ll see a review of of of some of those things and we’ll get back to you on that. ; Of of the of the aviation sector? Yes, ma’am. And with that but was there an analysis about the impact of the requested procurement reduction? Did you all do an analysis of production line suppliers, workforce, restart risk prior to the decision to cut the funds? We’ll we’ll get that from the Army and get that to you.
I don’t have it in front of me but I I would imagine it’s similar ; Okay. I very very much would love to see that before the subcommittee marks up the appropriations bill coming up. Let me just quickly can you provide the committee in writing the department’s assessment of the minimum sustaining production rate for the Black Hawk and Chinook industrial base, the supplier base risks associated with this budget request, and the funded mitigation plan if production falls below those levels? Can you provide us with that information? I think that’s critically
important. ; I think we should get that to you and I think those platforms are critical to the force right now and we need to make sure we’re able to sustain them. ; I think you made the point you all that industrial base readiness is is a strategic issue. It’s what the national security strategy you know recognizes and I look forward to hearing you know more about how cutting the billion dollars in the in the base investment aligns with that shared goal.
Let me just question to you General Kane, despite the precipitous drop in procurement for Army Aviation platforms, your budget request invests heavily in modernization. I’m a believer in modernization. I think it’s necessary. I support investing in future capability but Congress also has to understand the transition risk.
The department is asking us to accept reduced procurement of aircraft the force uses today while relying on future systems that are not yet fielded. And and and General, from a joint force readiness perspective, uh what is the Department’s plan to avoid a mobility lift sustainment gap if current aviation capacity declines faster than replacement capability arrives.
What are the decision points where the Department would revisit the reductions if future vertical lifts schedule slip, if costs rise, or operational demand remains higher than expected? Well, Ranking Member, I appreciate the question and anytime we’re looking at military options to our political leaders, we we do bake in and can carefully consider that transitional risk uh because it links back to risk to force, our military forces, and and risk to missions.
And as we look forward over the life cycle of this budget and beyond into the FYDEP, you know, we’re always looking at the evolution of those operational plans and then the decision points along the way to make sure that we can match the combat capability and capacity required to achieve the desired effects that are baked within those operational plans across the COCOMs.
And I commend the Army uh who’s looking closely at the two platforms that you’re most uh interested through your line of questioning and the work that Under Secretary Obadal has been doing to look at rotary link rotary wing lift requirements as we move to the future. But uh in the end, we have to have mobility on the battlefield.
Um it has to be survivable uh in the in the conflicts and uh engagements that we’ll have. And so, we we remain very closely focused on those requirements, ma’am. ; Well, I I I I I appreciate that. And my only concern is it is not whether modernization is important, but I understand with some of those efforts that were not we are looking for a future date is next year, the year after, and so forth because it’s not been it’s not been fielded.
But what we need to take a look at, and I think you understand this, is whether the department is managing this transition in a responsible way. In my view, what we cannot afford to do is to create a near-term aviation gap. We weaken the supplier base, and then ask the Congress to come back and rebuild that capability and that capacity at a greater cost because when you destroy the infrastructure, it’s very very difficult to bring that back and the skilled workforce that it takes to deal with that.
So, very clearly this information, and if you can supply this to our committee, would be very very helpful in our moving forward. I yield back, Mr. Mr. Chairman. ; Chairman. Mr. Okay, let’s start with the actual numbers because the numbers are why this hearing happened in the first place.
The government’s 2027 budget plan drops Black Hawk buying from $913 million to $39.3 million. Apache buying, which had funded the Army’s program to rebuild AH-64 Apache helicopters, falls from $362 million to $1.6 million. That’s not a careful cut. That nearly wipes it out. Chinook buying drops from $629 million to $211 million. Together, those three cuts make up a large part of the $5 billion amount driving this entire fight.
And here is the production risk. Boeing Chinook production has already fallen to about 20 aircraft per year, even though that program has existed since 1960. Boeing’s own vice president overseeing the program said, “20 aircraft per year is about the lowest number needed to keep the part suppliers open. Not comfortable.” Her exact words.
And the 2027 budget plan cut Chinook buying further still. The question of what happens below the lowest number needed to keep going has a pretty obvious answer. Now, the Pentagon’s response to all of this is, “Don’t worry, we’re getting a new aircraft to replace it.” And look, here’s what they’re not telling you about that replacement.
The MV-75 isn’t just a newer version of the Black Hawk. It’s a very different kind of aircraft, a tiltrotor aircraft, which can tilt its rotors. And the first one the Army has ever used widely. It tilts its rotors to take off straight up like a helicopter and fly forward like a regular airplane with fixed wings, which means it requires different repair and support systems, different equipment used by crews on the ground, different hangar setups, and a separate training and approval process for pilots from the Black Hawks it’s supposed to replace.
The Army’s existing aircraft support system was built for regular helicopters. None of that support system carries over. So, the gap here extends far beyond when the new aircraft arrives. It’s about building an entirely new repair and support system at the same time while the leader of the Army Aviation Center of Excellence is publicly warning that the program for the new aircraft runs on what he specifically called a success-oriented schedule, a very hopeful plan for something we don’t have a lot of history
with. The original program plan set first use by Army units at 2030. And look, it’s not like nobody warned them about this. Less than 2 months before today’s hearing, the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency, the federal government’s own independent government watchdog, published an official review of exactly this situation.
Released on March 25th, the GAO showed how the Army changed its whole aircraft plan to reduce costs, canceling a new attack and scouting aircraft, moving money toward drones, and suggesting the buying cuts that forced today’s clash. The GAO specifically pointed out that money pressure was already shaping the way the program was set up, and that none of the decisions being studied had even been made final.
Congress had to specifically request that review because members of Congress had almost no clear view of how any of these decisions got made. That document existed before yesterday’s hearing. It was already available. And the man whose department produced all of this still failed to provide the analysis. But here’s the thing, and this is the part that doesn’t appear in any budget document.
He officially approved the Army Transformation Initiative, a plan to change the Army, formally titled Army Transformation and changes to how the Army buys equipment. In an official note dated April 30th, 2025, the general who helped design and carry out that plan was Army Chief of Staff Randy George, who co-published the Army’s letter explaining how to carry out the plan the very next day.
On April 3rd, he fired him. Not at the end of his time in the job, not with a stated reason, abruptly and without a public explanation. So the same guy who just told Congress he’d get back to them was defending a plan to change the Army whose main military planner he’d personally fired 6 weeks earlier in the middle of a conflict.
That’s the accountability problem, and it doesn’t stop there. George had led the Army through an ongoing conflict with Iran and was credited with pulling the service out of a serious problem, finding enough new soldiers in 2024 while moving faster to use drone technology. He also fired the leader of the Army command in charge of training and change General David Hodney that same day.
Multiple news organizations, including NBC News, reported that he took steps to stop or slow down promotions for more than a dozen high-ranking officers across all four parts of the military, like the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Doesn’t matter what their record was. Doesn’t matter how long they served or what they built.
The question this raises isn’t just whether the aviation cuts are a smart plan. It’s whether the people best able to speak up against a bad plan are still in a position to speak up. And this pattern has happened before when factories stopped making something. When the Air Force ended F-22 Raptor production in 2009, stopping at 187 aircraft, far short of what the service actually needed, a study by Rand, a research group, found that the total cost to start making the aircraft again and buy just 75 additional aircraft would run upward of $19 billion
compared to $13.7 billion if production had simply never stopped. That $5 billion gap is what the extra cost of letting factories and suppliers shut down actually costs. Checking and approving suppliers again, rebuilding the tools and machines, rebuilding the trained workforce, the permanent loss of the ability to make things smoothly and cheaply built up over years.
Keeping a factory line running is always dramatically cheaper than restarting a cold one. That principle does not change when you swap out the aircraft. And I want to be clear, this isn’t just Democrats warning people. His deep cuts to Pentagon leadership have worried Republican senators who’ve largely been unwilling to say a word against this president’s team.
A Republican senator who was not named told The Hill that the loss of many Pentagon leaders has been a big concern, specifically naming the firing of General George as the moment that concern reached a point where it became much bigger. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina called the firings less than ideal, described the fired generals as extraordinary, and told The Hill directly, “I think he’s missing the mark on personnel.
” When senators from the president’s own party start using language like that on the record carefully, while still leaving themselves room to deny taking a strong side, they’re telling you something. Now, to be fair, the Army has an answer to the risk that factory lines could shut down. Top officials have highlighted recorded deals to sell military equipment to other countries, 96 Apaches to Poland, 60 Chinooks to Germany, additional Chinooks to the United Kingdom, and point to money from getting rid of older aircraft as a way to put money back into the program.
That’s not a made-up argument. It’s the Army’s own official plan. The problem is that foreign military sales are decisions made by other countries for themselves on their own timelines and their own budgets. The Pentagon can encourage those deals. It cannot force them, guarantee their timing, or plan US factory schedules around them the same way it plans around money approved by Congress.
Whether that strategy is even enough to keep these factory lines running is precisely what DeLauro’s requested documents would help Congress judge. And here is the most important background the hearing left out. The quote about supercharging the network of defense factories and suppliers doesn’t come from some leftover document from a previous president’s team.
It comes from this president’s team’s own 2026 National Defense Strategy. The government’s defense plan line of effort four one part of the strategy signed and published on January 23rd. That was his Pentagon in January 2026. Three months later, the same Pentagon proposed a budget plan that nearly wipes out buying for Army attack helicopters.
And then, he told members of Congress he wants to strengthen US defense manufacturing to replace the weapons and ammunition the war has used up. The call to supercharge, the cuts to the network of defense factories and suppliers, and the call to rebuild it all from the same office, all within four months. Let that sink in.
Congress now has three documents from the same president’s team that point in three completely different directions. So, here’s why the timing of all of this matters more than it might seem. The 2027 budget is already being reviewed by Congress. That process where Congress edits and approves the bill is actively running.
Multiple bills have already cleared both smaller committee and full committee. The defense bill specifically is scheduled for smaller committee markup on June 11th and full committee markup on June 24th. That’s weeks away. And manufacturers are not pausing for Congress to resolve this. Boeing and Sikorsky are making production planning decisions right now based on the official budget plan because that is the only official signal they must plan around.
Taking another look doesn’t hold a production line, and there is another point the hearing left unspoken. The politics of these defense jobs explain why Republicans are being careful. The Chinook program supports thousands of jobs in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, a key election area where that work has lasted for more than 60 years.
The Black Hawk program also affects Stratford, Connecticut, in Toro’s own home state. The networks of part suppliers for both programs reach into dozens of areas represented by members of Congress, including ones represented by Republicans who haven’t gone on record about any of this. Some Republican senators are choosing careful language over open disagreement because these defense jobs affect both parties.
And when production rates fall below the levels needed to keep running, the workers who leave aren’t waiting for Congress’s budget schedule to resolve. They’re moving to airline and civilian aircraft work. Factory workers trained for defense jobs, and workers who handle aircraft electronics have been moving to airline jobs for years.
That labor loss moves in exactly one direction. How the military buys equipment has a clear pattern when it comes to big switches from old military equipment to new equipment. The Army canceled the Future Combat Systems program, a major Army modernization plan, in 2009 after spending about 18 to 20 billion dollars without putting into use the main vehicles it was designed to produce.
The F-35 has seen its Block 4 upgrade program grow more than 6 billion dollars over first cost estimates and run at least 5 years behind schedule, according to the Government Accountability Office’s September 2025 official review. In every single major switch from equipment already being used to a new replacement system, the gap between the thing being cut and the thing being promised has always turned out to be longer, more expensive, and more damaging to the ability to be ready for war than the original plan expected.
That history isn’t being negative. It’s the only honest starting point. So, here is what yesterday’s hearing made clear in the official record. He signed an order to change the army. He fired the general who built it. Congress asked him during a war whether his department completed the studies of risk to part suppliers, worker impacts, and factory line impacts before suggesting these cuts, and he didn’t provide them.
He said he’d get back to her. And what she asked for has a formal name in Congress’ rules, questions for the record, written answers sent after a hearing, written responses submitted after the hearing with no deadline required by law and no way to force an answer before the meeting where Congress edits the defense bill begins on June 11th. He knows that.
Toro knows that. And the decisions at Boeing and Sikorsky are not waiting. The absence of that analysis at that hearing wasn’t a mistake. It was a choice. When he cuts $5 billion from an active network of defense factories and suppliers during a war, points to a plan to change the army whose main planner he just fired, and tells Congress he’ll get back to them.
The missing information isn’t the problem. The missing information is the plan. And I want you to remember that the next time this president’s team tells you it is serious about making the US military stronger again. Before you head out, I want to hear your honest reaction to this story. Jump into the comments and tell me if you think this is a real issue or just political noise.
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The $5 Billion Defense Gamble: How New Budget Cuts Threaten to Dismantle the American Industrial Base
In the halls of Congress, the language of bureaucracy often masks the weight of life-and-death decisions. However, during a recent hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, the veil was lifted to reveal a high-stakes confrontation over the future of American military readiness. At the center of the storm is a proposed $5 billion cut to Army aviation procurement—a decision that critics argue could permanently cripple the United States’ ability to manufacture the very aircraft that define its aerial dominance.
The tension reached a boiling point when Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) questioned the Pentagon’s leadership regarding the 2027 budget request. The numbers presented were not merely “trims” or “adjustments”; they represented a near-total withdrawal from established production lines. Funding for the UH-60 Black Hawk is slated to plummet from $913 million to a staggering $39.3 million. The AH-64 Apache program faces a similar fate, dropping from $362 million to a mere $1.6 million. These are not just statistics; they represent the lifeblood of the American defense industrial base.
The Accountability Gap
The timing of these cuts is particularly jarring given the recent launch of “Deal Team Six,” a task force championed by defense leadership to ensure accountability and eliminate waste. Yet, when pressed by DeLauro on whether the Department had conducted a formal analysis of how these cuts would impact the industrial base, production suppliers, and the skilled workforce, the response was a non-committal promise to “get back to her.”
This lack of immediate data is alarming to lawmakers who understand that defense manufacturing is not a faucet that can be turned on and off at will. When a production line for a complex aircraft like the CH-47 Chinook—which has been in production since the 1960s—drops below its “minimum sustaining rate,” the consequences are often terminal. Boeing has already warned that 20 aircraft per year is the absolute floor required to keep parts suppliers in business. The new budget threatens to push production well below that red line.
The “Success-Oriented” Risk
The Pentagon’s justification for these drastic cuts rests on a pivot toward modernization, specifically the development of the V-280 Valor (the MV75), a tilt-rotor aircraft intended to eventually replace the Black Hawk. While modernization is a shared goal across the political spectrum, the “transition risk” is what keeps military planners and lawmakers awake at night.
The V-280 is not a simple upgrade; it is an entirely different platform requiring new hangars, new repair systems, and a completely different training regimen for pilots and ground crews. Major General Walter Rugen, director of the Army Aviation Cross-Functional Team, has previously characterized the schedule for this new technology as “success-oriented”—military parlance for a plan that leaves zero margin for error or delay. History, however, suggests that margin is always needed. From the F-35’s decade-long delays to the $20 billion spent on the canceled Future Combat Systems, the gap between “cutting the old” and “fielding the new” is historically where American readiness goes to die.
A Workforce in Jeopardy
Beyond the hardware, there is the human cost. Defense manufacturing relies on a highly specialized workforce that takes years to train. When production lines go “cold,” these workers do not simply sit in a waiting room for the next budget cycle; they migrate to the civilian aerospace sector or other industries.
The cost of restarting a cold production line is astronomically higher than maintaining a warm one. A study by the Rand Corporation on the F-22 Raptor production line illustrated this perfectly: restarting the line to build just 75 additional aircraft would have cost $19 billion—$5 billion more than if production had simply continued. This “restart tax” is a direct result of losing the tools, the certified suppliers, and, most importantly, the tribal knowledge of the workforce.
Contradictions in Strategy
Perhaps most baffling to observers is the internal inconsistency within the administration’s own documents. In January 2026, the National Defense Strategy explicitly called for “supercharging” the defense industrial base to meet the demands of a volatile global landscape. Yet, three months later, the 2027 budget proposal suggests dismantling the very sectors it claimed to prioritize.
This strategic whiplash is compounded by the recent and abrupt firing of key military leaders, including Army Chief of Staff General Randy George and General David Hodne. These were the architects of the “Army Transformation” plan—the very plan now being used to justify these budget cuts. Firing the primary planners of a transition while simultaneously asking Congress to trust the transition’s success creates an optics problem that even the most loyal supporters are finding difficult to defend.
The Political and Global Stakes
The ripple effects of these cuts extend far beyond the Pentagon. The Chinook and Black Hawk programs support thousands of jobs in key states like Pennsylvania and Connecticut. While the Army points to foreign military sales to Poland, Germany, and the UK as a potential “stop-gap” for factory lines, these sales are subject to the whims and timelines of foreign governments. They are not a reliable substitute for the steady, predictable demand of the U.S. military.
As the defense bill moves toward committee markup in June, the window for course correction is closing. Manufacturers like Boeing and Sikorsky are already making production decisions based on the signals sent by the official budget request. In the world of industrial manufacturing, a “plan to take another look” does not keep the lights on or the machines running.
The question remains: is the U.S. military being modernized, or is it being hollowed out under the guise of progress? If the industrial base is allowed to atrophy, the cost to rebuild it will be measured not just in billions of dollars, but in a permanent loss of the “arsenal of democracy” that has served as the backbone of global security for nearly a century. The missing analysis at the recent hearing wasn’t an oversight—it was a warning.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, Director Patel, I watched some of your Senate hearing yesterday when Senator Kennedy asked you, you’ve seen most of the files, who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these women to besides himself? You replied, according to the transcript, there is no credible information that he trafficked them to anyone else.
You also said somewhere in the hearing and here today that the problem is that the case files are constrained by limited search warrants from 2006 to 2007 and that the nonprosecution agreement hamstrung future investigations. Those constraints only apply to Southern District of Florida. They do not apply to Southern District of New York.
The location of the 2019 sex trafficking indictment which produced many things including a series of FD302 documents. According to victims who cooperated with the FBI in that investigation, these documents in FBI possession, your possession, detail at least 20 men, including Mr. Jess Staley, CEO of Barkclay’s Bank, who Jeffrey Epstein traffked victims to.
Victims including minors such as Virginia Roberts Euprey. May she rest in peace. That list also includes at least 19 other individuals. One Hollywood producer worth a few hundred million dollars. One royal prince. One high-profile individual in the music industry, one very prominent banker, one high-profile government official, one high-profile former politician, one owner of a car company in Italy, one rock star, one magician, at least six billionaires, including a billionaire from Canada………………….
