FORT BRAGG, N.C. (WTVD) — The Trump administration has quickly made its mark on the military community here in Fayetteville — including announcing local troops would be sent to the southern border and changing the name of the Army post back to Fort Bragg. Now, potential job cuts on base are creating a measure of uncertainty.

“We have never seen anything like this before ever in our lifetime, this is massive layoffs, massive reduction, what happens is fear,” said Grilley Mitchell.

Mitchell served in the military for two decades before retiring from Fort Bragg. He still calls Fayetteville home and is active in the veteran community. He worries for his friends and neighbors.

“Because this is a military community and we are dependent upon the military for survivability and it is going to have an impact, it’s going to have what we call a domino effect,” he said.

He said that especially after wars, there have been smaller peacetime reductions in forces through the years.

But now, the Pentagon is considering a major cut to civilian employees — between 5% and 8% of the workforce.

There are 14,000 civilians who work at Fort Bragg. That means at least 1,000 of them could eventually be out of a job.

The Pentagon said among the first to be cut would be those on a probationary period, similar to what’s being done with other agencies amid cuts being pushed by President Donald Trump’s DOGE commission, spearheaded by Elon Musk.

“We used to say back in the day, first hired, last fired, and if you’re on your probationary period there’s a good chance you wake up tomorrow and don’t have a job because you did not reach that point,” Mitchell said.

His concern is what potential cuts would mean for military readiness.

“The question is will these cuts have an impact to where we aren’t ready to fight a war?” he said. “The question is did you prepare for situations like this? Do you have money set aside? Do you have emergency funds in place so in the event that the storm does hit you? Because a storm is coming, I do believe that.”

The Pentagon could be releasing 5,400 probationary workers at home and overseas next week as part of this initial effort by next week.