Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of admirals, generals, and senior enlisted leaders to Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday to hear him announce a spate of personnel initiatives around physical fitness and grooming standards, the inspector general process, and mandatory training.
Some of the 10 initiatives flow from reviews Hegseth has ordered since taking the job in January, including gender-neutral fitness standards for combat jobs and exemptions to facial hair rules. Others take aim at processes that affect or have affected the secretary himself.
“I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape, or in a combat unit with females who can’t meet the same combat arms physical standards as men, or troops who are not fully proficient on their assigned weapons platform or task, or under a leader who is the first, but not the best,” he told the assembled flag officers and their enlisted advisors, who were ordered to Marine Corps Base Quantico on short notice from commands around the world.
Hegseth’s speech functioned as a sort of State of the Union for his culture war at the Pentagon, making baseless claims that fitness standards have dropped to accommodate the integration of women, or that the first women or people of color to hold high-ranking positions were chosen for that reason alone.
He called for a review of the inspector general process, including the Equal Opportunity and Military Equal Opportunity complaint processes, which enable troops to anonymously report concerns without fear of retaliation.
“We are overhauling an inspector general process, the IG, that has been weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues, and poor performers in the driver’s seat,” he said.
Hegseth is under investigation by the department’s inspector general for allegedly using an unsecure, unapproved app to conduct official business in the form of sending strike plans over Signal.
He also called for a review of the rules governing the retention of “adverse information”—for example, documented misconduct—on personnel records, which can hamstring a service member’s assignment or promotion chances.
“People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career,” he said.
Hegseth has said he resigned from the D.C. National Guard in 2021 after his superiors concluded that his tattoos were associated with white supremacist ideology and barred him from serving at Biden inaugural events.
Here are the initiatives Hegseth announced Tuesday:
- All combat arms positions will use the “highest male standard” as their physical fitness requirement.
- All combat arms units will implement a separate “combat field test.”
- All service members will take part in physical fitness every duty day, whether as a unit or individually.
- All service members must complete a height-weight assessment and physical fitness test twice yearly. (This is already policy.)
- Beards are banned, except for temporary waivers for pseudofolliculitis barbae. Religious exemptions, such as those for Norse Pagans or Sikhs, are rescinded.
- The department will review its definitions of “toxic leadership,” hazing, and bullying.
- A department-wide review of fitness standards.
- A review of the IG, EO, and MEO processes.
- Unspecified changes to retention of adverse information in personnel files.
- Reduction of mandatory training requirements.
“I look out at this group, and I see great Americans, leaders who have given decades to our great Republic, at great sacrifice to yourselves and to your families,” Hegseth said, addressing the assembled senior leaders. “But if the words today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign.”
Some of Hegseth’s comments on physical fitness standards, including repeatedly referring to “fat” service members, reinforce policies that already exist but may be unevenly enforced. As an example, members of the military regularly question whether four-star generals and admirals are truly completing their fitness assessments.
“Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really, any formation, and see fat troops,” the secretary said. “Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look.”
Other comments were flat-out fabrications, such as his assertion that in 2015, “combat arms standards were changed to ensure females could qualify.”
No service has lowered its fitness standards to accommodate women. In one case, the Army created an entirely new battery – the Occupational Physical Assessment Test – with gender-neutral scoring to determine which types of jobs new recruits are qualified to do. The service then spent years revamping its fitness test, adding events that test strength, power and agility in addition to muscular endurance.
Hegseth’s review requires a justification for any standards put in place after 1990, suggesting that he prefers a default to that era’s gender- and age-determined scoring of pushups, situps and a run.
Throughout the secretary’s many public comments alleging lowered fitness standards, he has not specified an instance where it happened.
Hegseth also called on the assembled leaders to be honest about the state of the force.
“We have to say with our mouths what we see with our eyes, just tell it like it is in plain English to point out the obvious things right in front of us,” he said. “That’s what leaders must do.”
That comment came just a month after Hegseth fired Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, whose initial assessments of the bombing of Iran nuclear sites determined that the raid had set back the country’s nuclear ambitions by months, rather than the “obliteration” the administration touted.
The department dropped another memo Tuesday, which Hegseth did not mention in his speech, directing a “cultural refresh” among the civilian workforce, “to address two complementary but distinct objectives: encourage workforce rewards and demystify the removal process.”
More than 60,000 civilians voluntarily left DOD this year either through the Deferred Resignation Program or Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, in addition to hundreds of probationary employees the Pentagon attempted to lay off and then invited back under a judge’s order.
Hegseth previewed another speech next month, saying he’ll “showcase the speed, innovation and generational acquisition reforms we are undertaking urgently,” and “the nature of the threats we face in our hemisphere and in deterring China.”
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