Secretary of War Hegseth Plans to Fire 20% of All Generals and Admirals; Appoints a Panel to Game Out the Future of Warfare, Including Elon Musk

I know that when the government wants to fire people, the best way to do it is to announce a staff slim-down. Judges can't force the government to retain more personnel than the government thinks they need, but they can protect left-wing saboteurs who are fired for cause. So best practice is to just say you're cutting personnel, then get rid of the saboteurs.

I don't know if Hegseth has to do that in the military, though. I think he might have more plenary power to fire people than secretaries overseeing civilian departments do.

So maybe this is just a reduction in force.

Either way, he'll be firing nonperforming generals and admirals.

War Secretary Pete Hegseth will announce plans to reduce by 20% the number of positions reserved for generals and admirals during his State of the Force address on Wednesday.

Hegseth approved reduction plans for the Army, Navy, Air Force and the military's joint pool earlier this month, according to memos seen by Fox News Digital. The services were directed to implement the plans and complete the reductions by Jan. 1, 2027.

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The new target doubles the 10% overall reduction in general and flag officer positions Hegseth ordered last year as part of his effort to streamline the military's senior ranks. That earlier directive separately called for a 20% reduction in active-duty four-star positions and a 20% reduction in National Guard general officers.

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Hegseth dubbed that effort "less generals, more GIs," arguing that reducing senior headquarters positions would push resources and authority toward troops closer to the fight.

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At least some of the positions will be downgraded rather than eliminated altogether. In a Sept. 16 memo approving reductions to the military's joint pool, Hegseth directed officials to establish O-6 requirements for general and flag officer positions identified for downgrade, allowing colonels and Navy captains to fill those jobs.

That sounds like he's using this as cover to fire the nonperformers. But I don't know.

The announcement comes exactly one year after Hegseth summoned hundreds of generals and admirals from around the world to Quantico, Virginia, for an extraordinary gathering where he laid out his expectations for the military's senior leaders and warned those who did not support his reforms to step aside.

CBS: Hegseth said he'll be firing officers who "clung to woke."

Hegseth said he's aimed for the department to be "unrelenting, unapologetic, and uncompromising" in its mission to win. Generals who "clung to the woke department or seem to think civilian control of the military is simply a suggestion, well, they no longer work here," Hegseth said.

He also announced the military would be a force of cleanshaven normies: "No beardos, no weirdoes."

"The media calls that a purge," he said. "I call it accountability, and long overdue."

Hegseth also used the speech to spell out the kind of force he wants. He used a string of derogatory terms for people he said should not serve in the military: "No fatties, no t******s, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors."

I assume the censored word is the absurdly forbidden word "trannies." Just because. Trans agitators decided they needed their own n-word to ban and decided that the very typical method of shortening a word by just ending a "y" or "ies" ending was "offensive" and a "slur."

By the way, this word so offended communist propaganda outlet NPR they deleted it entirely without even noting the censorship:

"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."

Oorah.

As you can imagine, NPR is so triggered you guys!

He also will clarify that religion is not disfavored in the military, as it was under Obama and Biden. Quite the opposite.

In his last proclamation, Hegseth declared he will establish the Office of Religious Affairs at the Pentagon that "will report straight to the top."

"Cutting-edge technology ... new basing and bases ... and a better educational pipeline are still incomplete without the most essential component of our republic: faith," he told the assembled service members.

He said the Defense Department has "a sacred duty" to provide troops with "first-class religious support" wherever they're sent, bashing past administrations for treating the topic as an afterthought.

"Political correctness and secular humanism got a vote. Chaplains did not. Budgets were cut. Resourcing and manpower needs were ignored. Base chapels fell apart," Hegseth claimed. "Decisions about faith and religion were made by secular careerists in cubicles and lawyers running around with red tape."

He's also expanding the colleges from which officers will be drawn, shifting away from woke Ivies to southern schools which probably instill more traditional (and pro-military) values.

The military training program, called "America's Corps of Cadets," will include Louisiana State University, Liberty University, Tuskegee University, Mississippi State University and Hillsdale College.

"We need more officers from academic institutions like our military academies and senior military colleges, and today we're going to make that happen," Hegseth said.

Each school will be a "distinguished military college" and will be expected to "maintain exceptionally high standards of cadet discipline, tactical instruction and military organization," the Pentagon chief said.

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"From the Ivy Leagues to the most liberal arts colleges, our colleges and universities have become anti-American DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] worshipping woke factories. Qualities like grit and courage replaced with political correctness and social justice," Hegseth said. "God and country traded for Che Guevara and critical theory."

He announced an Autonomous Warfare Command, which would field AI-guided military drones.

Hegseth also announced a new panel to game out the massive changes in future -- actually, current -- warfighting. Elon Musk, tech mogul Palmer Lucky, and Newt Gingrich were named as leaders.

I don't know what Gingrich is doing there. Well, I do. He considers himself a futurist and does think about military procurement. He's said of himself "I'm a hawk, but a cheap hawk," so maybe Hegseth thinks he will be able to separate the real cutting edge weaponry from the boondoggles.

He also announced a "FORTRESS America" initiative.

Sean Parnell @SeanParnellASW

Today, at Secretary Hegseth's direction, the Department of War is announcing FORTRESS America--a national insurance policy for the American homeland.

Every major military installation in America will generate its own power.

We are bringing our critical supply chains home.

We are building strategic reserves deep enough to fight through disruption.

We are securing the high ground and the airwaves--our satellites, our spectrum, and our ability to see, navigate, and communicate with one another.

The goal of this initiative will be to make bases entirely self-sufficient, having their own electrical plants for example, so that they can't be easily disrupted by an attack.

"If an adversary takes down the grid by cyberattack, by sabotage, or by any means, our bases stay lit. Our aircraft keep flying. Our command centers never go dark," he said.

The effort also is meant to bring critical supply chains home, including rare earth minerals, specialty metals, semiconductors and propellants "mined in America, refined in America, built in America by American workers."

He also announced some kind of new base, which I guess is a model for future bases:

Sean Parnell @SeanParnellASW

Today, at Secretary Hegseth's direction, the Department of War is announcing The Next Great American Base.

This will be a dynamic, self-sustaining power projection platform.

This will include hundreds of thousands of acres, organic power generation, modern air defenses, and cutting-edge technology.

In some interesting military news: the last of the legendary SR-71 Blackbirds -- the highest-flying, fastest plane, made of titanium because it's the only metal that won't melt at very high speeds -- has apparently been re-activated after having been retired in 1999.

And given to NASA, for some reason.

Why? They're not saying. They're saying that NASA is back in the X-Plane game, and that they'll be "flying high and fast again."

But they don't specify what NASA will do with the plane.

Interviewer: You showed a picture of the Blackbird up there.

Jared Isaacman: You sure that's a Blackbird?

Interviewer: Well, okay. What was that picture that you showed up there?

Isaacman: Like I said, NASA's getting back in the business of flying high and fast again.

Interviewer: I mean, that doesn't seem like a space vehicle. It seems like an Earth-air vehicle.

Isaacman: Yeah. The first "A" in NASA is our aeronautics portfolio. What we've contributed to over the decades, you may not realize this. Look, when you go see an F-22 fly at an air show and wow you, the fly-by-wire technology was us. The thrust-vectoring technology was us. NASA's been contributing to breakthroughs in aeronautics, both civil, commercial and national-security applications, for a long time. And again, kind of similar to the same theme, over the years we've been forced to spend our aeronautics budget on, like, subsidizing high-TRL efforts from big prime contractors. An engine that's 40 years old, they want to squeak 3% more fuel efficiency out of it, get NASA to pay for it. I'm like, are you kidding? There is no way we are doing that. You can underwrite that investment yourself for competitive reasons. You know what I want to do? I want to get back to the radical airframe and engine designs like we were always supposed to do, and you're getting a little bit of a taste for that on the...

I don't know why that ends in a "...".

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:16 PM

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