Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed a forcewide reduction in general officers May 5, 2025, as part of a larger effort within the Defense Department to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy that hinders mission effectiveness.
"Secretary Hegseth signed a memorandum directing general officer and flag officer reductions throughout the services to cut bureaucratic bloat at the top and to empower our warfighters across the force to do their jobs," said Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell during the Weekly Sitrep video, which highlights department activities each week.
Parnell said the policy is expected to enhance operational effectiveness and empower warfighters throughout the ranks.
The secretary's recommendation calls for an initial minimum 20% reduction of four-star general positions across the active component and a similar reduction of all general officers within the National Guard.
Hegseth also wants to cut 10% of all general and flag officer positions in conjunction with a planned realignment of the unified command plan, which details the organization of combatant commands.
That realignment, he said, "is going to be, we think, the most comprehensive review since the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. It's a generational change in combat command structures, planning, training, geographic areas of responsibility, mission and operational responsibilities."
Hegseth noted that, similar to other reforms within the department, this change to the general officer ranks has been planned in detail.
"This is not a slash-and-burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers," Hegseth said. "This has been a deliberative process, working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff with one goal: maximizing strategic readiness and operational effectiveness by making prudent reductions in the general and flag officer ranks."
In the Red Sea, Iran-backed Houthi forces have been attacking U.S. ships and those of other nations for years, disrupting legal commerce. In mid-March, the U.S. finally took steps to put an end to those attacks. U.S. Central Command, at the direction of President Donald J. Trump, began a series of attacks on key terrorist Houthi targets in Yemen.
"Freedom of navigation is … a core national interest," Hegseth said. "The minute the Houthis say, 'we'll stop shooting at your ships [and] we'll stop shooting at your drones,' this campaign will end, but until then, it will be unrelenting."
On May 5, 2025, the situation in the Red Sea changed.
"President Trump announced that the Houthis, exhausted by our nearly daily operations, have capitulated and do not want to fight," Parnell said. "President Trump has been very clear from the beginning: freedom of navigation is the objective; whether the strikes continue is up to the Houthis."
In a January 2025 executive order, Trump made it the policy of the federal government to recognize only two sexes: male and female. That order said that within the federal government, "sex" will refer to an individual's "immutable biological classification as either male or female."
In an additional executive order, the president also classified gender dysphoria as incompatible with military service, stating, "Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DOD policy, expressing a false 'gender identity' divergent from an individual's sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service."
In keeping with that direction, Hegseth signed a policy memorandum in February 2025, which detailed, among other things, that service members must serve in accordance with sex, that gender dysphoria is incompatible with military service and that service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria will be processed for separation by their respective services.
Actions by the department regarding that memorandum had been paused due to legal challenges until this week.
"On Wednesday, the Supreme Court allowed President Trump's ban on transgender military service to take effect," Parnell said.
With the decision, the department will now move ahead with the president's and the secretary's direction.
"Service members who have a current diagnosis or history of or exhibit symptoms with gender dysphoria may elect to separate voluntarily," Hegseth said. "There's a timeline here. And then eventually, involuntarily, if necessary."
Finally this week, Hegseth attended the Special Operations Forces Week conference in Tampa, Florida, where he addressed operators in attendance.
"He pledged to keep standards high and to leave wokeness and weakness behind," Parnell said.
During the event, Hegseth thanked the SOF community for maintaining their own high physical standards and noted that standards must also be high throughout the military services.
"The standards need to be high, and they need to be gender neutral," Hegseth said. "If you can do the job, you're in that formation. And if you can't, you're not. That is restoring the warrior ethos, and it's something we're seeing across all formations that the troops are responding to."