Defense secretary’s Pentagon shakeup: necessary reform or dangerous instability?

Numerous high-ranking officers painted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Sept. 30 speech to hundreds of generals and admirals gathered at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia as a turning point in how his leadership style, attitude and overall competency are viewed in the upper echelons of the U.S. armed forces.

Ben Wolfgang reports:

On September 30th, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a speech to hundreds of generals and admirals gathered at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. 

When it comes to combat arms units, and there are many different stripes across our joint force, the era of politically correct, overly sensitive, don’t hurt anyone’s feelings, leadership ends right now. — Sec. Pete Hegseth

Sources say this marked a turning point. The officers gathered there expected big strategic news. Instead, they got what some called a, quote, theatrical, unquote, performance. 

Rather than discuss global defense strategy or military modernization, Secretary Hegseth focused on things like grooming standards and internal politics in the Pentagon. 

One Army General stated flatly, “If he ever had us, he lost us.”

That Army General and other senior officers I interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear they’d be fired for expressing their honest views. 

But Secretary Hegseth isn’t backing down. He’s framing all of this as part of a cultural reset, a return to what he calls the warrior ethos inside the US military. 

And his message is simple. Promotions and assignments should be based solely on merit, not diversity quotas. And he’s pushing for tougher fitness standards, fewer political distractions, and a more old-school combat-focused mindset. 

And to be fair, recruiting has gone up dramatically since he came into office. That’s a big deal at a time when the military has been struggling to attract new members. 

But behind the scenes, things look messy. 

This year, there’s been a wave of firings, resignations, and early retirements, some from top generals and admirals. 

They include former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General C.Q. Brown, and former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti. They were both removed from their posts in February, just weeks into Mr. Hegseth’s tenure.

General David Allvin, the Air Force Chief of Staff, said he will retire next month, about halfway through his four-year term.

Doug Beck, former Director of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, resigned in August. And there are many more examples. 

Critics also say that Hegseth has insulated himself with a very tight inner circle, including a lot of close friends and family, and that he’s ignoring the expertise and the structure that make the Pentagon run smoothly. 

If that’s true, and it seems to be, it could have long-term consequences for how the U.S. military operates. 

Retired Marine Corps Colonel Mark Cancian, now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote a lengthy analysis of Mr. Hegseth’s Quantico speech that examined why some issues made it into the address and others didn’t. 

“Hegseth’s focus on fitness, weight, and appearance reflects his experiences as a junior officer. These are perennial challenges at the small unit level. Anyone who has commanded a small unit in the military understands where he’s coming from.” — Mark Cancian

Mr. Cancian went on to say that if he had a higher level of experience, he would have talked about much broader issues, such as the threat to the U.S. from Communist China. 

It’s not just the military leadership that Hegseth is clashing with. He’s also rolled out new restrictions on press access to the Pentagon so strict that almost all major outlets, including The New York Times, Fox News and The Washington Times, have refused to sign them. 

At least 30 major media outlets left the Pentagon due to those new media policies.

They want to spoon-feed information to the journalists. That’s not journalism. Journalism is going out and finding the story and getting all the facts that support it. — Gen. Jack Keane on Fox News.

So the question really is this. Is Secretary Hegseth cleaning house or tearing down decades of institutional stability in the Pentagon? 

Some analysts say he’s focusing too much on the so-called culture wars instead of actual strategy and that his fixation on things like haircuts and fitness standards feels more like something a junior officer might be focused on, rather than a Defense secretary.

But others argue, of course, that this kind of cultural shakeup was overdue, that the military had become too bureaucratic and too politically correct.

Is the Pentagon headed in the right direction? Please leave your comments below. 

Read more: ‘He lost us’: Generals, senior officers say trust in Hegseth has evaporated

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