Editor’s Note: This story was updated Sept. 29, 2026 to include new details from a Pentagon spokesperson.

The Pentagon has created a new team it says will better align military spending and personnel with its mission.

The Force Agility and Streamlining Team, or FAST, looks to root out wasteful contracts, unnecessary bureaucracy and inefficient processes and funnel those resources to higher priorities, the department said in a release. It can recommend that programs be changed or canceled altogether.

“Every dollar we spend should make our military stronger, more ready and more lethal,” Pentagon Comptroller Jay Hurst said in a statement. “Through FAST, the department is establishing a disciplined mechanism to challenge the way we do business, identify where taxpayer dollars are not producing sufficient value and act on those findings.”

FAST, established in August by Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, falls under the comptroller’s office; its director will report to Hurst. Members include “former industry leaders and experts in revolutionizing reform at the corporate level” who can bring private-sector practices to the Pentagon, a department spokesperson told Federal News Network Sept. 29. 

“FAST is structurally positioned within the [comptroller’s] office to actively review upcoming requests for proposals, optimize active contracts and remove acquisition processes before inefficiencies occur,” the spokesperson said. “Final executive decisions will be made through established acquisition authorities, informed by FAST’s rigorous analysis.”

The team will first prioritize areas with the “greatest potential to improve financial visibility, systems integration, funds distribution, acquisition outcomes, contract performance and major weapons program execution,” as well as help DoD pass its upcoming audit, the spokesperson said. It’s not looking to hit a particular number of personnel reductions, program cancellations or spending cuts.

Officials hope that ingraining it into the bureaucracy it looks to reform will make it last.

“Eliminating waste and inefficiency remains a warfighting imperative,” Feinberg wrote in an Aug. 4 memo. “The FAST will serve as the foundation of an enduring institutional mechanism to advance this imperative across the department.”

Wilson Nance, a FAST project manager, said on social media that he’s gone “pretty fast and far in pursuing the priorities given to me regarding deregulation efforts along classified lines.”

“In places like the five-sided circus, we work toward a shared vision of ensuring all we do is tied to the operational context of those who are forward today, and those who may be going forward in the future,” the retired Marine Corps officer wrote on LinkedIn. “Long-term changes are moving ahead today.”

The team’s mission echoes that of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which helped eliminate tens of thousands of civilian jobs across DoD and canceled federal contracts to reduce perceived bloat and implement Trump administration priorities.

But FAST appears more akin to the “Night Court” process launched by former Defense Secretary Mark Esper while he served as Army secretary, said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. That initial deep dive moved more than $30 billion from lower-priority initiatives to instead fund major Army modernization programs.

FAST “seems to be a more detailed scrub of the budget using cross-service comparisons and best practices,” Harrison said. “But many administrations have had something like this in the past, and the savings almost always end up being much, much less than expected.”

Nance indicated FAST wants to grow; the group can total as many as 40 members.

“You have to be comfortable with not being the center of attention, with being part of a team and pushing the rock uphill one step at a time,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “Long-term changes are moving ahead today.”

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