MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to continue thinning the ranks of generals and admirals even as the war with Iran continues.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
That is what he told hundreds of junior military leaders in a speech Wednesday at Quantico in Virginia. Leaning into the culture war flashpoints, Hegseth says he has revived a warrior ethos in the military.
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PETE HEGSETH: The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.
MARTIN: Here to tell us more is NPR's Quil Lawrence. Quil, good morning.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So what exactly does Hegseth want to do with the military leadership?
LAWRENCE: Well, he says he's cut 10% of these flag officers already, and he would like to try to reach 20%. And he smiled when he said, in the past year, these generals or admirals who disagreed with him aren't there anymore. It's pretty unusual. Hegseth has been reaching way down into the promotion list to prevent some colonels from becoming generals and just not giving any explanation.
MARTIN: You know, some of these generals were highly regarded. I mean, they had vocal support from Democrats and Republicans. And so this has been controversial. So is it the number of positions he's cutting that critics object to or who he seems to be going after?
LAWRENCE: No, I mean, a lot of people agree that there might be some bloat at the top of the military ranks. But it's these inferred reasons or lack of any explanation for the names that he is cutting, Air Force General CQ Brown, Army generals Randy George and Chris Donahue, who are widely considered among the best. And he's fired a number of senior Black and female officers. And Hegseth has implied in the past that women or non-white generals are DEI hires. He said in his speech that recruitment is up, although that often has a lot to do with the economy as much as anything else.
MARTIN: Did he have anything else to say about the war with Iran?
LAWRENCE: Well, he said Iran's conventional forces are destroyed, and so is their nuclear program. He spent just as much time railing against the press corps for reporting things like low morale on these long deployments to Iran and damage to bases overseas, depleted munition stocks. Here's what he said.
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HEGSETH: A free press is, of course, important. But partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission that they're undertaking is fundamentally anti-American. It's sick. It's a national betrayal. It's treason, actually.
LAWRENCE: It's worth noting that the Pentagon hasn't had a news briefing since May, which is also very unusual. Nothing like this during 20 years of sometimes very intense war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's also unusual, though I think we're getting used to it, just how partisan this speech was to a military that really prides itself on avoiding politics.
MARTIN: And I'll just note here that he seems to be objecting to reporting that is true. Did he have anything to say about actual Pentagon policy?
LAWRENCE: Yes. He said he's going to elevate the Chaplin Corps. And he said that faith was a core strength of the U.S. military. And this week, he also was announcing that he's going to be cutting civilian tenure-track jobs at the U.S. military academies, all within his idea of focusing on lethality. But he also announced a new relationship with five colleges, including one historically Black college, to help promote military enlistment.
But the biggest news is the creation of a four-star command of autonomous warfare, essentially a drone command, and a project to study innovations on the battlefield, much of which we've seen in Ukraine. And also, an effort to disrupt and supercharge the Pentagon's really glacial procurement process. And that is going to involve a couple of names you'll recognize, Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, and then two tech billionaires, Palmer Luckey and Elon Musk, who led the president's project DOGE to reform U.S. government spending last year.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Quil Lawrence. Quil, thank you.
LAWRENCE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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