For the second straight year,* the Secretary of War took over our space to deliver a speech. Last year, he addressed every general and admiral in a command position, declaring “the Department of Defense is over” and “the liberation of America’s warriors.” Yesterday afternoon, he gathered select junior officers and enlisted members to proclaim, “We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that: no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.”
Guardian (“Hegseth confirms plan to cut 20% of US top military brass and rails at ‘beardos, weirdos and wimps’“):
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has confirmed plans to cut 20% of generals and admirals and declared “no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps” would be tolerated inside the country’s military.
Delivering his latest extraordinary attack on diversity, and dismissing reports of low morale within the US armed forces as “false claims”, Hegseth also suggested they were retaining service personnel at “record” rates.
The defense secretary pointed to those onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, following concern over mental health and supply issues on the aircraft carrier, which was deployed for almost nine months. About “80% of the force” onboard was retained, he said.
Addressing lower-ranking troops at the Marine Corps Base on Wednesday, Hegseth boasted about the anti-diversity policies in the Pentagon pushed by Donald Trump’s administration.
“The only focus, as you know, in your formations should be training, readiness, accountability, discipline and lethality,” Hegseth said. “And when you pursue those things, you don’t have to walk on eggshells … the complainers, the ideologues and the poor performers are no longer in the driver’s seat.”
He added: “But it’s worth saying again, so the fake news understands it. We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that: no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.”
Generals “who clung to the woke department, or seemed to think civilian control of the military is simply a suggestion, well, they no longer work here”, Hegseth said.
[…]
During his speech in Quantico, Virginia, the defense secretary announced several new initiatives, including a a new Pentagon project which will see Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey – a top Trump donor and ally – and Newt Gingrich, the former US House speaker, work with the department to study the “future of warfare”.
The Guardian previously reported on how Luckey’s company, Anduril Inudstries, a major defense technology company, has received billions in government contracts over the last year.
Hegseth also took aim at Ivy League universities and liberal arts colleges during his speech – which Trump has targeted routinely since he returned to office. The defense secretary branded the institutions as “DEI-worshipping woke factories”. Notably, Hegseth is a graduate of Harvard and Princeton Universities – both members of the Ivy League.
Hegseth said the Pentagon would now partner with other institutions as part of its educational pipeline. Some of these schools, such as Liberty University and Hillsdale College, are known for conservative values.
Others joining the partnership are Louisiana State University, Mississippi University and Tuskegee University.
NYT (“‘No Beardos, No Weirdos, No Wimps’: Hegseth Lays Out His Military Vision“):
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gathered hundreds of junior officers and enlisted troops at a base in Virginia on Wednesday to extol the virtues of basing Pentagon policy on culture-war issues and to complain about the news media.
Calling it a “State of the Force” address, Mr. Hegseth doubled down on his decisions to fire dozens of admirals and generals, bar transgender people from serving and eliminate diversity programs. And not for the first time, he used vulgarities to describe certain groups of Americans.
[…]
The defense secretary praised the war against Iran — in which he declared victory just weeks after it began but has now dragged into a seven-month campaign — as a courageous operation “that every red-blooded American is proud of.”
He used the last portion of his remarks to announce new initiatives for the Pentagon.
They included the creation of a new “autonomous warfare command” for robotics, which he said would be the equivalent of the military’s geographic and functional combatant commands.
The secretary pointed out three civilians in attendance, Elon Musk, the Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, who wore a blazer over his signature Hawaiian shirt, and a former House speaker, Newt Gingrich. He called them “three of our nations’ best minds” and said they would lead a new effort called Project Meridian to study the future of warfare.
Mr. Hegseth said he would meet with the three men at a secure facility on the base in Quantico immediately after his speech.
He also stated his intent to build a new military base — what he called “a fortress” — somewhere in the United States, saying that state governors would compete to host it and offer hundreds of thousands of acres of state land to build it.
Tens of thousands of U.S. troops currently stationed overseas would be sent back to the United States and based at the “fortress,” he said, without explaining which countries would see a reduction in U.S. forces.
The Pentagon has been reviewing its force posture overseas, particularly in Europe, with an eye toward reducing the number of troops stationed outside the United States. In May, Mr. Hegseth announced he was canceling a deployment of troops to Poland only to be quickly overruled by Mr. Trump.
As usual, Mr. Hegseth wove religious language and Christian themes throughout his address and derided “secular humanism,” adding that he had established an office of religious affairs that would report directly to him.
NPR (“Leaning into culture war flashpoints, Hegseth says he has transformed U.S. military“):
At a gathering at U.S. Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told hundreds of junior military officers and enlisted leaders that the Trump administration has achieved a cultural shift in the military.
“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors,” Hegseth said on Wednesday. “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.”
Hegseth has vowed to shrink what he says is a bloated flag-officer corps since he took over at the Pentagon. He said he’d already achieved a 10% reduction and aimed to reach 20%. But his firings so far, and the unconventional way he has reached down into promotion boards to essentially end the careers of some senior officers, has drawn bipartisan criticism. Many of the notable firings were of Black or female officers, let go without explanation despite excellent service records.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued this statement:
“Throughout his tenure, Secretary Hegseth has taken countless reckless, partisan actions that have damaged our military. He has ended the careers of dozens of our most accomplished senior officers and refused to explain why. Today’s news should alarm every American.”
NYT defense reporter Greg Jaffe (“Hegseth Talks Tough as Republican Doubts About His Leadership Grow“) was not impressed:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has survived in office by projecting an image of strength.
His combative style has won praise from President Trump and support from the Republican base. “He loves war,” Mr. Trump said earlier this year, slapping Mr. Hegseth on the biceps.
By many measures, though, Mr. Hegseth has never been weaker. He is leading the military through an unpopular war. Republicans in Congress complain privately — and increasingly in public — that he and his staff are dismissive of their questions and frequently unprepared for briefings.
If Democrats win a majority in the House, Mr. Hegseth will likely face new calls for his impeachment.
Mr. Hegseth’s firing and sidelining of senior military officers, often with no explanation, has fed mistrust and led many in the top ranks to question his leadership.
[…]
On Wednesday, Mr. Hegseth focused on the part of the job that plays to his strengths. Onstage at a military base outside Washington, with a giant American flag behind him, he attacked the media and promoted his victories in the culture wars.
“The complainers, the ideologues and the poor performers are no longer in the driver’s seat. No more silly PowerPoint trainings or drag queen shows,” Mr. Hegseth said. “No more gender pronouns. No more identity months. Only the warrior ethos.”
He also laid out an ambitious agenda that included building a massive military base and establishing a major new command focused on preparing the military for wars dominated by robots and artificial intelligence.
Most of those initiatives will require support from lawmakers who view him with unease, if not disdain.
[…]
Mr. Hegseth’s day began outside the Pentagon, where he led the 600 junior troops in push-ups, stretching and a morning run, just as he would have when he was an Army captain two decades earlier.
To drive home Mr. Hegseth’s message of toughness and lethality, the service members traded in their military-issued workout gear for “This is War” T-shirts of the sort that Mr. Hegseth has recently modeled during his workouts, which his staff members regularly post on social media.
But Mr. Hegseth is no longer a junior officer, and the biggest challenges he faces are not among the frontline formations.
The war in Iran, which Mr. Trump started and Mr. Hegseth now leads, has drained the military’s stockpile of critical munitions that it needs to defend U.S. troops and allies in the Middle East, and to deter an even larger conflict with China or Russia. Replenishing those magazines could take two to three years, according to defense experts.
The war is also creating economic problems at home. The average American could tune out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We’re at war; America’s at the mall,” U.S. troops fighting overseas often bitterly complained.
By contrast, the war against Iran and the battle over the Strait of Hormuz have caused fuel and food prices to surge. Republican congressional candidates in Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio and Michigan have increasingly questioned the rationale for continuing the conflict.
“The war in Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” said Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan and an early supporter of the war.
Mr. Hegseth’s stewardship of the military, particularly his firing of generals and admirals, has alienated Republican national security hawks in Washington.
“It’s not the right way to treat people,” Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska and an Air Force veteran, said in a recent interview. “It’s not decent.”
Mr. Hegseth’s clashes with lawmakers extend beyond the firings. Republicans in Congress have complained that he and his staff have misled or lied to them about recent decisions to pull Army brigades out of Poland and Romania.
“We didn’t think we were treated honestly,” Mr. Bacon said.
And lawmakers from both parties have said that they cannot get answers to basic questions about the conduct of the war in Iran, or about the Pentagon’s budget requests.
“You want to sell people on your needs,” said Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina and a key vote in confirming Mr. Hegseth as defense secretary. “You want to sell people on your priorities. Then you have to engage.”
He added: “I don’t think Hegseth has developed any productive relationships, even with Republican members.”
[…]
The result is that many of Mr. Hegseth’s top priorities in Congress are going nowhere. Earlier this year, Mr. Hegseth fired or forced out the Army chief of staff, the Army secretary and the Navy secretary. Senators are refusing to confirm the leaders Mr. Hegseth has chosen as replacements.
The defense secretary also has struggled to convince lawmakers in the House and Senate to pay for any of the Pentagon’s spending bills. In the near term, the Pentagon will have to make do with last year’s budget of about $890 billion, or about 40 percent less than it is currently budgeting.
The difference will force the Pentagon to reallocate money set aside to repair barracks, train troops and buy weapons to pay for more pressing needs, like sustaining 50,000 troops in the Middle East. In the coming months, some of Mr. Trump’s top priorities, such as his proposed Golden Dome missile shield for the United States, will likely come to a halt.
I mean, sure, if you want to put a negative spin on it. But at least the troops will look right.
The substantive policy proposals are outlined here, with links to the written orders initiating them.
Project Agincourt and the creation of a four-star Autonomous Warfare Command by a year from today is the most interesting. The problem it’s designed to address—our seeming inability to procure massive numbers of autonomous systems cheaply—is real. Whether the creation of a functional combatant command—which would ordinarily require a boatload of generals and admirals at a time when Hegseth is cutting 20 percent of that cohort—is the right mechanism for that remains to be seen. No other combatant command has an analogous mission.
The need for “America’s Corps of Cadets” is less obvious. For generations, we’ve commissioned officers mainly through three sources: the service academies, ROTC, and Officer Candidate School (OCS). ROTC, the route both Hegseth and I took, is by far the largest supplier. Within that group, there are six Senior Military Colleges (the Citadel, Virginia Military Institute, Norwich, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, and the University of North Georgia), which have Corps of Cadets, where students live in barracks and wear uniforms to class every day. Hegseth is now designating Louisiana State University, Liberty University, Tuskegee University, Mississippi State University, and Hillsdale College as “Distinguished Military Colleges” that will try to replicate the SMCs.
Why?
The program addresses the need for more officers grounded in the Constitution, Western civilization, American heritage, and the warrior ethos at a time when many traditional commissioning sources have drifted from those foundations. By embedding continuous military discipline and leadership development into these new partner schools, America’s Corps of Cadets aims to grow the number of officers who are patriotic, rigorous, and prepared to lead and defend the Republic.
Which seems to presume we’re not getting those from regular ROTC programs? Presumably, all those schools already have ROTC programs, but only wear uniforms to their ROTC classes and otherwise live the life of normal college students. VMI and the Citadel are basically state-run military academies. Norwich, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, and UNG have Corps of Cadets within larger universities. One imagines that these new DMCs will be in the latter camp.
The other initiatives—a new military base in a state to be named later, a directive that existing bases figure out how to generate their own power, an Office of Religious Affairs that reports directly to him, and a new technology program office—are relatively banal. As Jaffe notes, most of them will require congressional funding.
*Presumably not coincidentally, both speeches were on September 30, the last day of the Fiscal Year. This creates havoc in the Defense Travel System, since the outbound travel will fall in one fiscal year and the return travel in the next.
