While Pentagon officials are not willing to publicly weigh in on the emerging plans by President-elect Donald Trump to purge the military’s ranks of many top officers, the Defense Department’s spokeswoman says that removing a slew of admirals and generals would have serious impacts on missions and readiness.
“I’m not going to speak for the incoming administration or speak to any hypotheticals on what they will and won’t do,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters Thursday.
However, Singh did say that the idea of a sudden departure of multiple top leaders was something that the Pentagon already faced last year, when Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., held up hundreds of military promotions
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“You remember the time when we had a significant amount of holds on our general and flag officers,” Singh said, referencing the roughly 10-month hold by Tuberville.
Tuberville placed a hold on all general and flag officer nominees in February in an effort to pressure the Pentagon to reverse its policy of covering travel and leave for service members who seek abortions.
Tuberville’s hold gradually ballooned to cover more than 450 top leaders inside the Pentagon as he refused to relent despite arguments from Democrats, some Republicans, Pentagon officials and military families that he was harming national security and punishing military families for a policy they had no control over.
Singh said that this hold — which effectively deprived the military of hundreds of generals and admirals — could be analogous to the plans that are now coming from the Trump transition team.
“That’s going to have an impact to operations, that’s going to have an impact on morale, and that is going to have an impact on the department,” Singh said, speaking on Tuberville’s hold.
The idea of reviewing top generals and admirals became public on Tuesday, when The Wall Street Journal reported that a draft executive order is being considered by the Trump transition team that would establish a “warrior board” that would review three- and four-star officers to determine whether they should continue to serve.
The proposal calls from conservative think tanks, lawmakers and Trump to weed out supposedly “woke” generals — a term that has become overused to the point that it has lost much of its meaning. In this context, however, it seems to be broadly defined as officials who have promoted diversity in the ranks or supported the mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations.
On Wednesday, Reuters also reported that members of Trump’s transition team were also drawing up a list of military officers — likely focused heavily on officers close to now-retired Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — to be fired.
In speaking with current and former generals, Military.com found that they are concerned that the move will make their work much harder and politicize a force that is already struggling to stay outside the political fray.
“It could be very hard to do our job if we have to constantly be making sure we’re appeasing someone on a political or partisan level,” one currently serving Army lieutenant general told Military.com earlier this week.
Officials in the Pentagon also noted that the idea that current three- and four-star leaders are somehow suddenly unqualified to lead is curious, given how much selection and vetting they go through to rise through the ranks.
Congress votes on every officer’s promotion from O-4, major or lieutenant commander, all the way to general or admiral. Additionally, each service mandates various screenings and selection processes itself that only increase as a service member moves up the ranks.
Aside from the operational impacts a proposed purge would have, it is likely to also force junior and mid-grade officers to rethink their careers in the military.
Amid Tuberville’s hold, the four service secretaries wrote an editorial where they noted that “the generals and admirals who will be leading our forces a decade from now are colonels and captains today,” and “they are watching this spectacle and might conclude that their service at the highest ranks of our military is no longer valued by members of Congress or, by extension, the American public.”
But so far the Pentagon has made no public comment on the Trump transition team plans to purge military leadership.
“Again, I’m not going to speak to the hypothetical of what you’re referencing,” Singh said when asked about the potential Trump policies. “Whenever you have or put a strain on the system where there are not enough people in a position, or not enough people sharing the burden of work, of course, it’s going to strain the system.”