Pete Hegseth Says He Want to Thin the Military Ranks

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he wants to “streamline leadership by reducing excess general and flag officer positions” in the US military.

In a memo published Monday, Hegseth said he wanted to reduce the number of four-star positions in the active-duty military and the number of general officers in the National Guard by at least 20%. He also called for a further reduction in general and flag officers by at least 10%.

“More generals and admirals does not equal more success. Now, this is not a slash-and-burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Hegseth said in a video he posted on X on Monday.

Hegseth said the proposed cuts were part of a “deliberative process” between his department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to maximize “strategic readiness and operational effectiveness by making prudent reductions in the general and flag officer ranks.”

Hegseth said in his video that the US has “44 four-star and flag officers,” as compared to in World War Two, when the US had “17 four and five-star generals.”

The US military had 37 four-star officers as of September 2023, per a report the Congressional Research Service published in March 2024.

This isn’t the first time Hegseth has sought to cut defense spending.

In March, Hegseth said the Defense Department was terminating over $580 million in programs, contracts, and grants that Elon Musk’s cost-cutting outfit, DOGE, identified as wasteful spending.

Musk had previously taken aim at the Defense Department’s $841 billion budget in an op-ed he co-wrote with Vivek Ramaswamy for The Wall Street Journal in November. Ramaswamy was co-leader of DOGE at the time but left DOGE in January.

“The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.

Last month, Hegseth said the Pentagon would be cutting its IT and consulting contracts with companies like Accenture and Deloitte. He said the contracts “represent $5.1 billion in wasteful spending” and cutting them would result in nearly $4 billion in savings.

“So we want to thank our friends at DOGE. We want to thank all the folks here that have helped us unpack this, reveal it, and we’re excited to make these cuts on behalf of you, the taxpayer, and the warfighters at the Department,” Hegseth said in a video on X where he announced the contract terminations.

The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.