US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered senior Pentagon leadership to cut the number of four-star generals and admirals by at least 20% across the military, according to a memo signed by Hegseth dated Monday and obtained by CNN.
As of 2023, there were 37 four-star generals and admirals across the entire military.
The memo also directs the Pentagon to cut the number of general officers in the National Guard by 20%, and to cut the total number of general and flag officers across the military by 10%. There are currently about 900 general and flag officers — those with the rank of one star or higher — across the military.
In his memo, Hegseth wrote that the cuts are a “critical” step toward “removing redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership by reducing excess general and flag officer positions.”
The Pentagon has been considering making significant cuts to the top of the military amid an administration-wide effort to shrink the federal government, CNN reported in March.
That includes potentially consolidating combatant commands, such as merging European Command and African Command.
Hegseth has argued before, including during his confirmation hearing, that there are too many senior generals in the military. He said during a podcast interview last summer that he believes roughly a third of the military’s most senior officers are “actively complicit” in the politicization of the military.
“I would say over a third are actively complicit, and then you have a lot of grumblers who are sort of going along, trying to resist the nonsense as much as they can, but they’re not fundamentally changing it,” he said.
In a second podcast, Hegseth claimed that senior officers in the military are “playing by all the wrong rules” to cater to “idealogues in Washington, DC.”
“And so they’ll do any social justice, gender, climate, extremism crap because it gets them checked to the next level,” he said.
The Trump administration has already undertaken an unprecedented purge of military leadership, firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Navy chief in February. The same night, Hegseth said he was “requesting nominations” to replace the military services’ most senior lawyers, the Judge Advocates General for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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