Pete Hegseth damaged the US military. His incompetence is also responsible for weakening our national security (along with Kash Patel at the FBI and former/current leadership at the DHS).
When Army Secretary Dan Driscoll delivered his resignation to President Trump at the end of August, he reportedly left behind a two-word verdict on his boss. A source told the Financial Times that Driscoll said Hegseth was inflicting “generational damage” on our military.
Driscoll wasn't a critic. He was a Trump appointee, a JD Vance law school classmate, and the civilian in charge of the largest branch of the armed forces.
He had spent months trying to modernize the Army for the kind of drone-and-missile war the U.S. is currently fighting in Iran. He quit because he couldn't do the job when the leadership was being gutted underneath him.
That's the through line of Pete Hegseth's tenure at the Pentagon. Not one catastrophe. A steady, deliberate removal of the people, the rules, and the weapons stockpiles that actually keep a country safe.
He Fired Roughly 1 in 10 of the Military’s Top Officers
A New York Times analysis found Hegseth has fired or blocked the promotions of more than 80 generals and admirals — about 10% of the nation's senior officer corps. Almost none were told why. None were accused of dereliction of duty.
The list reads like a directory of the top floor at the Pentagon. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy. Adm. Linda Fagan of the Coast Guard. Gen. Randy George, fired as Army chief of staff in April after reportedly resisting Hegseth's demand to block promotions for Black and female colonels. Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse of the Defense Intelligence Agency, fired after his agency reported that U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear sites hadn't worked.
Retired Rear Adm. John Kirby, who spent 29 years in the Navy, pointed out the pattern in an MS NOW op-ed: Hegseth isn't just campaigning against DEI, “he's campaigning against DNA.”
The share of high-ranking officer nominations going to women is now at its lowest point in more than two decades. Kirby served alongside several of the women Hegseth pushed out, including an Air Force lieutenant general with more than 1,800 hours in an A-10.
“These women kicked lethality's butt,” he wrote.
Female Navy officers told the Associated Press they now see a ceiling on their careers. These are people who gave twenty years to the country and are now being told, quietly, that the country is done with them.
He Fired the Lawyers Who Said “You Can’t Do That.”
In February 2025, Hegseth removed the Judge Advocates General of the Army and the Air Force — the senior uniformed lawyers whose job is to tell commanders when an order is illegal.
He had already called military attorneys “jagoffs” in his 2024 book.
Retired Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap, a former deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force who now teaches at Duke Law, called the firings unprecedented and said stripping the services of independent legal advisers “sends all wrong messages through the military legal community.”
Retired Maj. Gen. Steven Lepper, who held the same Air Force post, told Newsweek that undermining the rule of law inside the military “erodes the strength of the military” itself.
Here's why that matters to a private, not just a general: under military law, a service member must refuse an unlawful order, and “I was just following orders” is not a defense at court-martial. Remove the lawyers, and you leave enlisted troops holding the legal bag.
Then There’s the Murder
The consequences arrived fast.
Since September 2025, U.S. forces have destroyed boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing 227 people.
No public evidence has been presented against any of them. Families in Colombia, Trinidad, and Ecuador say their relatives were fishermen.
In one September 2025 strike, a follow-up attack killed survivors clinging to the wreckage of the first hit — a “double-tap,” which is a war-crime.
In Iran, Hegseth boasted that he'd unleashed “maximum authorities on the battlefield” — a loosening of the rules meant to protect civilians.
He also announced that there were “no more stupid rules of engagement,” and he once prayed for overwhelming violence against the enemy.
On the first day of the war, a U.S. Tomahawk hit an elementary school in Minab. An estimated 170 people died. Most were children.
This month, Iranian officials say a US strike hit a wedding in Kuhestak.
A resident describes the bombing at the wedding she attended, where a 4-year-old boy was killed.
And the Pentagon's own watchdog found that Hegseth's use of Signal to share strike details risked the lives of American troops and violated department policy. He declined to be interviewed and declared himself exonerated.
Pete Hegseth Damaged the US Military and Depleted Stockpiles of Missiles/Interceptors
Seven months of war have burned through the arsenal. Senior commanders have warned that stockpiles are “dangerously low” — roughly 80% of THAAD interceptors gone, about half the Patriots, and virtually all of the Army's long-range precision missiles.
The Pentagon blew through $93.4 billion from the previous year’s budget in 2025. A reporter should ask Pete Hegseth why they didn't use that money to replenish the stockpiles he says were low before the Iran war. Even if they weren’t low, shouldn't the remaining budget funds be used to buy what the military needs instead of lobster tail, Alaskan king crab, ribeye steaks, ice cream machines, and musical instruments?
All the brazen corruption in this administration is why a scandal this huge can come and go in a single news cycle. Democratic senators should pull up receipts anytime Hegseth sits before Congress to request additional funding.
Retired Marine colonel Mark Cancian of CSIS noted that “there are no good substitutes.” Rebuilding could take three years.
That is the current national security picture: a $1.5 trillion FY2027 budget request, and not enough interceptors to cover American bases if a second crisis starts.
The Response Was to Hunt the People Who Noticed
When the shortages leaked, Hegseth didn't fix the shortages.
In August, investigators polygraphed about 50 members of the Joint Staff.
Retired Rear Adm. Donald Guter, a former Navy JAG, told the Times he'd “never seen polygraphs employed this broadly or at this seniority level.” Nobody failed. Nobody was charged.
Frank Kendall III, Air Force secretary under Biden, described the result on ABC's This Week: “people are afraid to tell him things that he doesn't want to hear.” Good officers, he said, are leaving because of the climate.
Five former defense secretaries — including Trump's own first Pentagon chief, Jim Mattis — warned in an open letter that the firings raise “troubling questions about the administration's desire to politicize the military.”
Public confidence in the armed forces has fallen to roughly 50%, down from 70% in 2018.
Even Republicans are Done
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who voted to confirm him, has called on Trump to replace Hegseth, saying he has “never witnessed more inept management” and accusing him of creating a leadership void.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a West Point graduate, said Hegseth has built a Pentagon where “dissent is punished and competence is secondary to personal allegiance.”
Meanwhile the Secretary of War is rolling out testosterone screening for troops over 30, enforcing a “no more beardos” grooming rule that disproportionately affects Black service members with medical shaving waivers, and firing the journalists at Stars and Stripes for documenting the conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Stars and Stripes also reported on the sailors who tried to throw themselves overboard.
Talent takes thirty years to grow and an afternoon to fire. Interceptors take two years to build and seconds to spend.
When retired Gen. C.Q. Brown was asked by young officers whether to quit, his answer was to stay — don't throw in the towel.
A lot of them are going to need that, because the rebuilding process that’s coming because Pete Hegseth damaged the U.S. military, will outlast this administration by a decade.
