As reported in a memo signed by Pete Hegseth and obtained by CNN, the Secretary of Defense has ordered the Pentagon to reduce the number of four-star admirals and generals across the armed forces by 20 percent as part of the Trump administration’s drive to “streamline” the various branches of the federal government.
The memo also directs the Pentagon to cut the number of officers in the National Guard by 20 percent and to reduce the total number of general and flag officers throughout the military by 10 percent. Currently, the latter number about 900.
In his memo, Hegseth wrote that the cuts are a decisive step toward eliminating the redundant structure of the armed forces, and to streamline and optimize leadership by reducing excess general and flag officer positions.
Hegseth has previously argued that there are too many senior generals in the military. During an interview last summer, he said he believed that about a third of them are “actively complicit” in the politicization of the armed forces.
During a speech on a podcast, Hegseth had said that senior U.S. officers “play by all the wrong rules” to satisfy Washington DC’s ideologies.
“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, in recent months, has already undertaken an unprecedented purge of top military leadership, firing the leader of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the Navy during last February.
At the time, Hegseth said he had “requested appointments” to replace even the military’s top legal officials, the Judge Advocates General of the Army, Navy and Air Force.
According to U.S. Department of Defense data, until March 31, 2025, the U.S. Army had 38 four-star generals or admirals. Hegseth said there is currently one general for every 1,400 soldiers in the Army, compared to one for every 6,000 during World War II. “More generals and admirals does not equal more success,” he explained. However, the Pentagon leader did not specify which positions will be affected by the cuts.
The approximately 40 four-star generals serving in the U.S. military include the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of staff of the army, the chief of naval operations, and the chief of staff of the Air Force, as well as the heads of US Africa Command, US European Command and US Forces Korea.
