Hegseth plans a 20% cut in American generals and admirals: ‘fewer generals, more soldiers’

The new reduction doubles the 10% cut in positions for generals and flag officers announced last year. Hegseth has described the effort with the slogan “less generals, more GIs”, while in a video posted on social media in May 2025 he said this is not about “a slash-and-burn exercise to punish senior officers”, but about “careful reductions in the ranks of generals and flag officers”.

According to officials, the military services have been instructed to complete the new cuts by January 1, 2027, while Fox News was the first to report the plans.

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the U.S. military had 809 generals and flag officers on active duty on September 30, 2023 — 48 fewer than the maximum authorized by law, and the number of senior military leaders as a share of the total force has grown significantly over the last six decades. Critics, among them Hegseth himself, argue that the growth reflects administrative bloat and waste, while others consider the number appropriate for a modern military that functions very differently from that of 60 years ago.

Hegseth will announce the plan publicly in a speech to troops at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia — a speech the Pentagon has presented as a “State of the Force” address, in which he will set out priorities for the coming year, according to USA Today. The address comes exactly one year after Hegseth summoned around 800 generals and admirals from around the world to Quantico for a speech in which he declared it was “unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the hallways of the Pentagon”. This year, by contrast, the audience for the speech will be ordinary troops rather than the military elite.

On the same day, September 29, Hegseth also ordered the military academies to immediately stop the practice of appointing civilian academics to tenured posts — the permanent employment status intended to guarantee academic freedom. “To ensure that our educational institutions remain firmly focused on the warfighting mission, we must address the structural mechanisms that have allowed civilian academic norms to dilute our focus on combat effectiveness”, he wrote in a memo to the academies.