Secretary Hegseth Cuts Four-Star Generals and Admirals from Staff

For years we’ve been hearing that our military is “top heavy,” but no one has been motivated to do something about it. Finally, President Trump and DOD Sec. Hegseth are taking action:

‘[W]e must cultivate exceptional senior leaders who drive innovation and operational excellence, unencumbered by unnecessary bureaucratic layers that hinder their growth and effectiveness,’ Hegseth wrote in a memo. ‘A critical step in this process is removing redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership by reducing excess general and flag officer positions.’

Protests have been lodged by the Democrats, of course:

Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioned Hegseth’s rationale for the cuts and warned dismissing top officers without ‘sound justification’ could ‘cripple’ the military. 'I have always advocated for efficiency at the Department of Defense, but tough personnel decisions should be based on facts and analysis, not arbitrary percentages. Eliminating the positions of many of our most skilled and experienced officers without sound justification would not create ‘efficiency’ in the military – it could cripple it,’ Reed said in a statement Monday.

His words are amusing, since it hasn’t occurred to him that Hegseth might have been justified in eliminating an even higher percentage than 20%; he hints at this point when he states that he plans to remove a minimum of 20%. Also, the secretary probably did a preliminary assessment to determine whether he was in a justifiable range for the number of removals. He addressed the questions about his strategy in this way, too:

‘When we were fighting across the globe during World War II, we had a force that was 12-million-strong. For that 12-million-man element, we had 17 four-and-five-star generals. Today, we have 2.1 million service members and 44 four-star and flag officers. So, it used to be a ratio of one general to 6,000 troops. Today, it's one general to 1,400.’ [snip] ‘This is not a slash-and-burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers. Nothing could be further from the truth. This has been a deliberative process working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff with one goal: maximizing strategic readiness and operational effectiveness.’ Hegseth said the plan will be carried out ‘carefully, but expeditiously’ in two phases. ‘Phase one is a minimum of 20% reduction of four-star and flag officers for active duty elements and a minimum of 20% reduction of general and flag officers in the National Guard Bureau,’ he said. ‘Phase two will produce a minimum of an additional 10% reduction of overall general and flag officers throughout the DOD.’

His straight talk criticizing the highest levels in the military speaks volumes about the state of affairs:

‘I would say over a third are actively complicit, and then you have a lot of grumblers who are sort of going along, trying to resist the nonsense as much as they can, but they’re not fundamentally changing it,’ he said. In a second podcast, Hegseth claimed that senior officers in the military are ‘playing by all the wrong rules’ to cater to ‘idealogues in Washington, DC.’ ‘And so they’ll do any social justice, gender, climate, extremism crap because it gets them checked to the next level,’ he said.

Hegseth has done his homework and is ready to shake things up.