Outside the Beltway

Hegseth and the Generals

A few more details have emerged.

James Joyner · Saturday, September 27, 2025 · 17 comments

Not surprisingly, speculation has been rampant about why Secretary Hegseth has called all of his top commanders for a hastily arranged in-person meeting. Theories have run from loyalty oaths and purges down to a photo op. Now, new details are emerging.

NYT (“Summoned U.S. Military Officers Are Expected to Hear a ‘Rally the Troops’ Message“):

The hundreds of U.S. generals and admirals who have been ordered to attend an unusual meeting next week at a military base in Virginia are expected to hear a “rally the troops” message based on the war-fighter culture that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has sought to infuse into the Pentagon, a senior Trump administration official said on Friday.

One of the main goals of the gathering, which military officials and historians said was without precedent in size and scope, is to “get our fighters excited” about the new posture of the department, said the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

In response to questions from Congress, the Pentagon on Friday sent a message to committees that oversee the military, explaining that Mr. Hegseth “will use this engagement to provide D.O.D. most senior service members his intent for the department,” including guidance on new “military fitness standards and several other areas of interest.”

Mr. Hegseth and other top administration officials have not disclosed a rationale for the meeting, not even to the officers who have been summoned from all over the world. The secrecy has caused anxiety among the military’s top ranks at a time when Mr. Hegseth has fired several senior generals and admirals, many of them people of color and women.

One general said he had received “no info whatsoever” and had been told to just be there.

The message to Congress and the senior administration official’s explanation fit with Mr. Hegseth’s top priorities as well his penchant for performative actions to shake up the Pentagon. Since taking office in January, the secretary, a former Fox News host, has focused much of his energy, in public speeches and on social media, on restoring a “warrior ethos” to the Defense Department, which he has said had been taken over by “woke,” diversity-obsessed ideologues.

[…]

Mr. Hegseth may also use the forum to preview a draft of a new national defense strategy for the Pentagon. The document, yet to be released, is reported to place homeland security, and defense of the Western Hemisphere, at the top of the priorities of what Mr. Trump is now calling the Department of War.

[…]

On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance sought to play down the significance of the meeting, describing it as a “not particularly unusual” occurrence and chastising the news media for turning it into a “big story.”

Mr. Hegseth, though, seems to be reveling in the secrecy surrounding the event. In a social media post on Friday, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who is retired from the Army, compared the gathering to a “surprise assembly” in 1935 at which German generals were “required to swear a personal oath” to the Nazis and Adolf Hitler.

Mr. Hegseth responded laconically to the post: “Cool story, General.”

[…]

The military’s top four-star warfighting commanders and the chiefs of the armed services typically meet at least twice a year in Washington, often holding a working dinner with the president. But the large number of lower-ranking generals and admirals in command jobs who have also been ordered to the Washington area is without precedent in recent memory, military officials said.

Many of the officers serve in active conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, and will need to drop what they are doing to fly to the Washington area, which several generals and admirals said privately would be both disruptive and expensive.

In the message to congressional committees, the department asserted that “this engagement will not impact ongoing operations nor serve as a disruption upon the force.”

If the meeting’s main focus is indeed about punctuating Mr. Hegseth’s war-fighter culture, military officers privately wondered why such a message could not have been conveyed in a big, secure video teleconference, as many sensitive operational and policy matters are discussed these days. The reason is that Mr. Hegseth and other top officials like the idea of “this bonkers meeting,” the senior administration official said.

WaPo (“New details emerge on Hegseth’s unusual mass gathering of top brass“) frames it similarly:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered hundreds of generals to travel from around the world to hear him make a short speech on military standards and the “warrior ethos,” multiple people familiar with the event told The Washington Post.

and adds:

“It’s meant to be an eyeball-to-eyeball kind of conversation,” one person familiar with ongoing discussions said. “He wants to see the generals.”

The orders,first reported by The Post on Thursday,were delivered without any stated reason, sending staff, many of whom will be coming in from commands that are focused on the world’s global conflicts, scrambling to make travel arrangements. The directive comes in the wake of Hegseth’s firing of numerous senior military officers without cause, upending military norms and creating a culture of fear in the Pentagon, the people familiar with the matter said.

[…]

Some Pentagon officials questioned the wisdom of launching a relatively large gathering on short notice to hear Hegseth speak for a matter of minutes, and bristled at the idea that long-serving military leaders — a segment of whom spent years in combat earlier in their careers — needed instruction on how to fight.

“They don’t need a talk from Secretary Hegseth on the warrior ethos,” a defense official said.

[…]

The recent firings of top military officers and the unusual nature of the order has stirred widespread concern among military officials that Hegseth may also have additional surprises in store. The secretary has detailed plans to consolidate combatant commands and reduce the total number of generals and admirals by as much as 20 percent.

The confusion on Thursday included military officials noting that two four-star Army commanders, Gens. Ronald Clark and Xavier Brunson, appeared in an internal service directory as lieutenants general, three people familiar with the issue said.

Clark, who oversees U.S. soldiers across the Pacific region, and Brunson, who commands troops in South Korea, both hold positions that observers worryHegseth will downgrade in prominence. A spokesman for Clark, Col. Isaac Taylor, said the listing for the general appeared to be erroneous because of a “glitch,” and had been resolved.

The in-person nature of the meeting has generated frustration as hundreds of senior officers and their staff prepare to fly in on either commercial or military aircraft, and book lodging and transportation to be in the audience for Hegseth’s remarks early Tuesday.

Staff were reluctant to discuss how their generals and admirals would make the trip to Virginia, given operational security concerns.

How they travel will have a significant impact on the cost, with a last minute commercial ticket from the Indo-Pacific region or Europe for the top officer and staff likely costing thousands of dollars. Military flights are far more expensive and would tie up limited airlift capabilities.

[…]

There are about 800 one-star and above senior leaders in the military, roughly half of whom are in command positions, said one former defense auditing official. But each of those officers travel with aides and support staff, so there could be hundreds of senior military personnel flowing in over the next few days.

The former defense auditing official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, estimated the cost of travel alone in the millions of dollars.

“Spending millions of dollars to jerk the entire military’s leadership to a short speech seems wasteful unless it’s an emergency,” the official said.

Sabrina Singh, the former deputy press secretary for Secretary Lloyd Austin, said based on her former travel experience, she also estimated the total price tag to be in the millions.

“It’s a huge waste of taxpayer dollars — money that should be funding critical missions,” Singh said.

[…]

Congressional aides scrambled Thursday to understand why the meeting had been called, receiving little information from the Pentagon. At least one senator, Army veteran Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), planned to send Hegseth a letter raising concerns about the expense and risk to national security involved in abruptly summoning so many senior officers. Duckworth’s office began circulating the letter Friday and expected more Democratic colleagues to join the effort, which includes a request for a Pentagon briefing before Tuesday.

This is all great theater, I suppose, but if the meeting is just a speech on the need to restore a warrior ethos or a roll-out of the National Defense Strategy, it will land with a thud. It would take something really monumental to justify the hoopla.

That said, some of the complaints strike me as overblown. While it’s true that even one-stars have aides and four-stars have a whole retinue of support staff, there’s no law requiring that they accompany their principal for a short meeting. Indeed, I don’t know what they would do since, presumably, they’re not invited into the room for this. Further, their doing so could be pointed to as evidence of the wastefulness and bloat in our senior officer ranks that Hegseth is targeting.