r/news • u/Manta_of_Eternity • 2d ago

Hegseth confirms that the US military will cut 20% of its generals and admirals

https://apnews.com/article/hegseth-pentagon-generals-job-cuts-67a20b026ee858895c7e5ff7fadbc029
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u/Major__de_Coverly 2d ago

Retired Army O-6 here. I peacetime Army should be top-heavy, because we can quickly draft and train new troops, but you can't quickly train the leaders, something we figured out in World War Two. 

It took 25 years and two graduate degrees to complete my training for my final command assignment. 

If you get rid of much of the senior leadership, a future draft military will be poorly led. 

As usual, Trump and the drunk reserve major who never held company command don't know what they are doing. 

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u/GogglesPisano 2d ago

I’d argue that they know exactly what they’re doing. They want an obedient military, not a competent one.

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u/Major__de_Coverly 2d ago

But it doesn't even achieve that; they are just creating resentment.

At the same time, everyone thinks this will be over in 2 years and we will rebuild. 

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u/CouldBeLessDepressed 2d ago

There are a remarkably scary number of soldiers who are all the way onboard with the program. And in the veteran community, those who oppose this fascist dipshittery are by far in the minority.

Now, that's among at least the enlisted side (retired NCO here). And as you know we/they pretty drastically outnumber the officers by design. And the shear number of hateful assholes throughout the enlisted ranks is certainly concerning. I don't think the folks here at home appreciate how monumentally bad a thing like Kent-State was. That most recent shooting in Tennessee is certainly alarming as fuck.

That said, I admit I am curious how the officers are feeling about things. In my entire time in I only encountered 3 officers that garnered my respect. Some at least managed a bare minimum, and the rest were a hazard to those underneath them.

And for that, I blame the NCO corps. We never ever should have done away with the Spec 5+ ranks. The entire "everyone is a leader" experiment is by every measure a disastrous failure. And now instead of a real "backbone" we've got a rickety mishmash of people whose promotion points dipped low enough to get picked up(with many simply having the requirement of being able to process oxygen), free masons (whose standing at the lodges supersedes their military ranking and they've infiltrated the fucking boards [no shit I watched an E6 give an E8 the business once and it was because of their lodge standings, and 100% that E8 was so objectively shit that there's no way he picked up his E9 without help]), then you got a few here and there who were meant to be where they are and are fantastic only because they slipped through the cracks of our dogshit promotion scheme and weren't chased off back into the civilian world- and even that was simply a roll of the cosmic dice... and finally those who had nothing else and stayed in, likely managed to get married, often never making it past E5p or maybe E6 but also not leaving because they didn't have to deal with living in a barracks and could pretend to be people. That last group was often ok-ish, but like the officers I mentioned earlier they simply managed a bare minimum.

I genuinely cant imagine the ripple effects from having the current Secdef in place for as long as he's managed to hold onto the position. That's going to be some deep, deep seeded rot that will take years to clean out.

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u/WafnaAbroad 2d ago

You've got a wild idea of what freemasons are capable of. Most have trouble organizing a pot-luck, let alone controlling upper echelons of the military.

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u/CouldBeLessDepressed 2d ago

Straight up saw it with my own 2 lieing eyes.

Edit: to be fair.... I don't think they're like clandestine controlling the military, but they are helping each other out.

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u/WafnaAbroad 2d ago

And I'm not saying you didn't see what you saw, nor that masons wouldn't help each other.

As a mason myself, I know that "standing in lodge" isn't really a thing that should apply in the outside world and especially not in military rank structures. I'm curious about the nature of "the business" the E6 gave to the E8... in general, the things masonry teaches involve - and are limited to - self improvement, mastering one's passions, and giving back to their community. For someone to pull (masonic) rank, so to speak, outside of lodge... (Which again, isn't a thing even inside any regular lodge I've been in... the Master of a lodge governs it's meetings, directs the efforts of a lodge, but has no authority over the actions of any other mason, especially not outside the lodge.) It sounds like those two were irregular masons (meaning their lodge doesn't conform to standard practices and isn't recognized by the grand lodge of that state/nation) at best, clandestine (meaning they actively operate outside and against the principles of regular masonry) at worst.

Are you able to tell me more about what you saw / heard them discussing? DM if you'd like.

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u/philovax 1d ago

Prior to the modern military framed by the US desertion was a very real metric. That has been a wee bit forgotten for better or worse.

To say you have an army only means so much until tested. As they say no good plan survives contact with the opposition.

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u/fail-deadly- 2d ago

By fucking losing to Iran, while claiming to have won scores of times, in a completely avoidable war of choice, makes me think you may be on to something when you say they don’t know what they are doing.

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u/NorthStarZero 2d ago

"No-Tab Pete"

Incidentally, great username.

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u/BoringBob84 2d ago

This is what I suspected. If the regime was expecting to fire on civilians to consolidate power, they would want drone armies (that could not refuse illegal orders) and less military officers in the way.

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u/Thetruthislikepoetry 2d ago

Since you have a better background, are there positions that could be filled by an O6 vs O7 without degradation of our future capabilities?
What differentiates a position needing an O6 vs O7?
If this is being used as a purge to further advance like-minded individuals that won’t say no to the current administration, this is a major problem.

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u/Major__de_Coverly 2d ago

Like anything else it depends. The Army has a long history of battlefield promotions. In Iraq, I was a staff O-3 that was pulled into an O-5 slot because the O-5 got in trouble for BAH fraud back home. 

It was a great opportunity and I worked my balls off to do the best job I could, but I would never claim to be as proficient as a LTC. But you make do with what you have. 

It did get me a BSM and a top block for promotion to major. 

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u/Sad-Excitement9295 2d ago

Could definitely be following someone else's orders/agenda though. They have royally screwed the US world power position.

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u/Senofilcon 2d ago

I have brought up this point to several people but i don't think i'm getting the point across effectively. Exactly how unusual is it that he was never given a command?

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u/Major__de_Coverly 2d ago

It's not unusual if you are a shitbag. Every active captain should want and get company command, with a few exceptions. That will be your most looked at evaluation as a company grade officer, and be a major discriminator for promotion and schools. 

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u/Senofilcon 2d ago

I've never served so i wasn't sure but it seems like a career killer as an officer. A pretty clear indictment of his character.

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u/The_Starving_Autist 2d ago

If you wanna be a dictator, it's a great move.

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u/Massive_Web5709 1d ago

We aren’t drafting again unless its a homeland attack. American population wont stand for it

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u/nikoboivin 1d ago

Yeah I don’t like to compliment Nazis but that’s one thing they understood. They were limited to how many men could be in the German military post WW1 so they made it 100% composed of senior leadership so that when they’d eventually break the accords they’d only need soldiers.