Outside the Beltway

Hegseth Orders Big Cuts to General and Flag Officer Ranks

Whether it's a good policy will depend almost entirely on execution.

James Joyner · Tuesday, May 6, 2025 · 17 comments

WaPo (“Hegseth orders cuts to Pentagon’s stable of generals and admirals“):

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday directed significant cuts to the U.S. military’s senior-most ranks, saying the elimination of positions held by about 100 generals and admirals is necessary to slash “redundant force structure” and streamline the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy.

The plan was announced with scant detail in a one-page memo signed by the defense secretary. It calls for a “minimum” 20 percent cut to the number of four-star generals and admirals — the military’s top rank — on active duty and a corresponding number of generals in the National Guard. There also will be another 10 percent reduction, at least, to the total number of generals and admirals across the force.

It was unclear whether Hegseth intends to gradually phase out the targeted positions, which his memo does not identify, or move quickly to force out the men and women who now fill those roles. Officials on Hegseth’s staff did not respond to questions about how quickly they may adopt the cuts, in keeping with the Pentagon’s recent efforts to limit communication with the public via the news media.

The move follows a purge of top military leaders that occurred in the opening weeks of President Donald Trump’s return to office. In his memo, Hegseth said the measures would safeguard the United States’ status as “the most lethal fighting force in the world” by promoting “greater efficiency, innovation, and preparedness for any challenge that lies ahead.”

There are more than 800 generals and admirals across the U.S. military, according to a study released last year by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which notes there is an enduring argument about how many the military should have. The number of four-star generals and admirals, in particular, has swelled significantly over the past few decades, the study found. Those in four-star positions typically have roles overseeing large organizations as well as extensive education. They also have broad military experience, often in combat.

[…]

During World War II, Hegseth said, the U.S. military had 12 million troops and 17 four- and five-star generals. The Pentagon now oversees a force of about 2.1 million service members with 44 four-star generals and admirals, he said. There have been no five-star military officers for several decades.

Hegseth said that his unofficial title for the policy is “less generals, more GIs,” using an informal term for rank-and-file service members. The effort, he said, will shift resources from “bloated headquarters elements to our warfighters.”

Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioned in a statement Monday night the rationale that Hegseth is using to make the cuts, noting the defense secretary’s propensity for dismissing senior military leaders.

“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,” Reed said. “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.”

NYT (“Hegseth Orders 20 Percent Cut in Four-Star Officers”) adds:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a 20 percent reduction of four-star officers — the military’s senior ranks — continuing the wide swath of job reductions and firings that have marked his three months at the helm of the Pentagon.

[…]

Mr. Hegseth has already fired a raft of military leaders, many of them people of color and women. He fired the Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.; the first woman to command the Navy, Admiral Lisa Franchetti; and the U.S. military’s representative to the NATO military committee, Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield.

[…]

Mr. Hegseth has already fired a raft of military leaders, many of them people of color and women. He fired the Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.; the first woman to command the Navy, Admiral Lisa Franchetti; and the U.S. military’s representative to the NATO military committee, Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield.

Given that the firings thus far seem to be motivated by partisan loyalty and an assumption that a woman or person of color in a high-ranking position couldn’t be there by merit, I’m naturally skeptical of the policy. Reed is asking the right questions and I hold out slim hope that the Armed Services Committees will do their job in conducting oversight. (Slim in a sense that is measured with a micrometer, if not a microscope, rather than a tape measure or ruler.)

That said, I’m not reflexively against the proposal. Indeed, I wrote a piece for The National Interest way back in 2016 titled “Getting Rid of Generals Won’t Save Much Money, But It’s Still a Good Idea.” Even then, it was not a new idea:

Six years ago, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced plans to, among other things, shut down Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and move to cut at least fifty generals and admirals and 150 Senior Executive Service positions over the next two years. This was in reaction to the new “austerity” facing the Department of Defense and was ostensibly going to provide cost savings that could be “reinvested” in the warfighting forces. JFCOM was ultimately absorbed into the Joint Staff and the personnel cuts never came.

Gates’ successor, Chuck Hagel, ordered a 20 percent cut in his own staff at the Pentagon as a “first step.” His uniformed counterpart, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, made vague promises of similar cuts in his staff as well as those of the Combatant Commands and the service component staffs that support them. Thus far, little has happened to implement these plans.

What sparked the essay was a proposal by the late John McCain, then chairman of the SASC, for a new Goldwater-Nichols Act that would, among other things, increase the power of the Joint Chiefs Chairman and radically streamline various component staffs. The House version was far less ambitious and the ultimate National Defense Authorization Act made only minor changes, none of which decreased the number of general and flag officers.

As I noted in the piece, replacing four-stars with three-stars and three-stars with two stars would have only minimal impact on budgets, since officer salaries are capped by law. Further, Senator Tim Kaine had the same reaction then as Reed does now: the targeted percentages seem arbitrary rather than targeted.

Still, I argued,

While planning staffs are an essential part of large military organizations, there has been massive bloat in the three decades since Goldwater-Nichols. Partly, that’s a function of the law’s requirement that officers complete a qualifying joint assignment before being selected for general or flag rank. That, naturally, creates institutional pressure to create qualifying billets. More significantly, the law rightly stripped much of the power that the service secretaries and chiefs had in the budget process. The bureaucratic work-around was to increase the size of the service component staffs at each of the combatant commands in order to ensure service “equities” were constantly looked after in the planning process. While understandable, it not only led to much larger and more expensive staffs than necessary but undermined the chain of command. The (usually four-star) commanders of Army, Navy, Marine and Air Forces in a theater report directly to the four-star geographic combatant commander. But they also answer “indirectly” to their service chiefs, who have Title 10 “man, train, and equip” authorities. The two masters are in constant tension.

The pilot program is a step toward mitigating that problem. Take the current Pacific Command organizational chart as an example. The four-star commander has a three-star deputy and a two-star chief of staff. There are nine J-code staff directors, who range from two-stars to colonel/captain rank, each of whom have a subordinate staff. There are three subordinate unified commands (Japan, Korea, and special operations) commanded by three-, four-, and two-star generals, respectively. Then there are four subordinate component commands, representing the services. The Army and Navy each have four-stars, while the Air Force and Marines have three-stars. There’s also a separate standing task force commanded by a rear admiral and a handful of special headquarters. And that’s just the top level of the organization.

Not only is that a lot of overlapping staff, with several four-stars reporting to one another (and in some cases to yet another) but it’s not even a warfighting headquarters. In the old days, a General Norman Schwarzkopf would run the war as the CENTCOM commander. Nowadays, we form a joint or combined task force, typically assigning either the deputy GCC or one of the component commanders as the task force commander and then designating a joint/combined ground force, maritime force, and air component commander. Why not just operate that way all the time rather than creating a new organization on the fly when it’s time to actually fight the force?

My views on the matter have shifted only slightly since. Most notably, because general and flag officers, especially senior ones, serve in quasi-diplomatic roles much of the time, there is a significant prestige factor in dealing with foreign partners. A four-star general or admiral carries a lot more clout speaking to a foreign chief of defense, foreign minister, or head of state than does a two-star. Ditto a one-star versus a colonel.

Additionally, there are a lot of bad, if not bad faith, arguments floating around. Most notably, the fact that we had fewer generals during World War II than we do now is completely irrelevant. We have a vast national security enterprise nowadays and, for good or ill, our geographic combatant commands are at the center of it.

That role has actually increased significantly since the end of the Cold War. The reason Schwarkopf’s successors don’t command combined task forces is because their role in what DoD calls Phase 0—steady state shaping of the operating environment—has increased exponentially. Even in a World War III equivalent—a major shooting war with China—it is highly unlikely that the INDOPACOM commander would head up the war effort. There’s just too much coordinating to do with the vast number of allies and partners in his vast area of operations to be done.

Relatedly, the notion that we should judge the requirement for senior leaders by the number of junior personnel in a formation is just silly. I’ve seen multiple references on Facebook and elsewhere that, for example, the Marine Corps is comparatively lean because it has far fewer GOs per private than does the Space Force. But their missions and personnel structures are completely different. Ground forces are naturally going to be heavy in very junior personnel, while more systems-oriented services will have fewer. That doesn’t really have much to do with the demands of enterprise-level management.