Military Times: “A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) probe has found that the Pentagon failed to evaluate the effects of recent civilian personnel reductions, leaving a substantial gap in understanding for key areas such as “readiness, workload, and lethality.” Roughly 78,000 civilian positions were eliminated in 2025 — about 10% of a workforce that originally exceeded 793,000. At the time, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth characterized the cuts as part of a broader effort to “streamline the Federal workforce and to make the Federal Government more efficient and responsive.” “Effective immediately and for the duration of this freeze, no vacant civilian position may be filled, and no new civilian positions may be created, unless approved by me,” he wrote in a Feb. 28, 2025 memo. The Friday report from the GAO — sometimes referred to as Congress’s watchdog — noted that under law, Hegseth “may not reduce the civilian workforce programmed full-time equivalent levels without conducting an appropriate analysis of the impacts.”…