The hundreds of U.S. generals and admirals who have been ordered to attend an unusual meeting next week at a military base in Virginia are expected to hear a “rally the troops” message based on the war-fighter culture that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has sought to infuse into the Pentagon, a senior Trump administration official said on Friday.
One of the main goals of the gathering, which military officials and historians said was without precedent in size and scope, is to “get our fighters excited” about the new posture of the department, said the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Mr. Hegseth and other top administration officials have not disclosed a rationale for the meeting, not even to the officers who have been summoned from all over the world. The secrecy has caused anxiety among the military’s top ranks at a time when Mr. Hegseth has fired several senior generals and admirals, many of them people of color and women.
One general said he had received “no info whatsoever” and had been told to just be there.
The senior administration official’s explanation fits with Mr. Hegseth’s top priorities as well his penchant for performative actions to shake up the Pentagon. Since taking office in January, the secretary, a former Fox News host, has focused much of his energy, in public speeches and on social media, on restoring a “warrior ethos” to the Defense Department, which he has said had been taken over by “woke,” diversity-obsessed ideologues.
The secretary has dispatched thousands of troops to help to stem the flow of migrants at the southern border; overseen the deployment of thousands of National Guard soldiers to Los Angeles and Washington to assist immigration efforts and combat crime; and, most recently, carried out President Trump’s orders to attack boats in the Caribbean that the administration says were carrying drugs to the United States.
Mr. Hegseth may also use the forum to preview a draft of a new national defense strategy for the Pentagon. The document, yet to be released, is reported to place homeland security, and defense of the Western Hemisphere, at the top of the priorities of what Mr. Trump is now calling the Department of War.
There are about 800 general-level officers in the armed forces, including 44 at the most senior, four-star level. It was not immediately clear how many of them would be attending. The senior officers will also be accompanied by their senior enlisted personnel advisers, two military officials said.
On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance sought to play down the significance of the meeting, describing it as a “not particularly unusual” occurrence and chastising the news media for turning it into a “big story.”
Mr. Hegseth, though, seems to be reveling in the secrecy surrounding the event. In a social media post on Friday, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who is retired from the Army, compared the gathering to a “surprise assembly” in 1935 at which German generals were “required to swear a personal oath” to the Nazis and Adolf Hitler.
Mr. Hegseth responded laconically to the post: “Cool story, General.”
The Pentagon on Friday declined to respond to questions about the purpose of the meeting, who would be attending or any other details about the gathering on Tuesday morning, Sept. 30, at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va.
The department referred questions to a brief statement on Thursday from Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, who said only that Mr. Hegseth “will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week.”
When asked by reporters at the White House about the summit on Thursday, Mr. Trump initially appeared unfamiliar with Mr. Hegseth’s plans. He seemed to assume that the defense secretary was bringing foreign military officers in for a meeting.
Administration officials said on Friday that Mr. Trump had no immediate plans to attend the meeting but noted that could change.
The military’s top four-star warfighting commanders and the chiefs of the armed services typically meet at least twice a year in Washington, often holding a working dinner with the president. But the large number of lower-ranking generals and admirals in command jobs who have also been ordered to the Washington area is without precedent in recent memory, military officials said.
Many of the officers serve in active conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, and will need to drop what they are doing to fly to the Washington area, which several generals and admirals said privately would be both disruptive and expensive.
If the meeting’s main focus is indeed about punctuating Mr. Hegseth’s war-fighter culture, military officers privately wondered why such a message could not have been conveyed in a big, secure video teleconference, as many sensitive operational and policy matters are discussed these days. The reason is that Mr. Hegseth and other top officials like the idea of “this bonkers meeting,” the senior administration official said.
Specialists in military matters suggested a range of possible outcomes.
“If this is just the mother-of-all-hands opportunity to share his vision for the department, as most expect, Hegseth will get maximum attention for explaining his agenda,” said Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who has studied the military for decades.
“But if he has a different purpose in mind, he may find this an awkward venue for achieving it,” Mr. Feaver said. “As a general matter, it is very risky to do big surprise reveals with all the world watching.”
Maggie Haberman and Greg Jaffe contributed reporting.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
The post Summoned U.S. Military Officers Are Expected to Hear a Rally-the-Troops Message appeared first on New York Times.
