Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered military planners to cut the number of four-star generals and admirals in the military by 20%, a move that could axe eight or nine positions for senior officers from across the five military branches.
“This is not a slash and burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers,” Hegseth said in a video released Monday evening introducing the memo, dubbed ‘General/Flag Officer Reductions.’ “It’s gonna be done carefully. But it’s gonna be done expeditiously.”
In a memo posted on the Pentagon’s public website, Hegseth ordered “a minimum 20% reduction of 4-star positions across the Active Component” and among general officers in the National Guard — a cut which could equate to the reduction of eight or nine positions, which would require the elimination of major service-wide organizations or reducing the role of running them to three-star officers or below. The memo also called for an “additional minimum 10% reduction in general and flag officers” across the military.
Four-star general or admiral is the highest rank a military officer can achieve, though, unlike more common military ranks, it is not earned independently on the merits of an officer’s career. Rather, about 40 specific jobs across the military are specified as requiring a four-star general or admiral, and an officer is promoted to that rank when chosen for one of those roles.
Most recently, Air Force Gen. Dan Caine was promoted to four-star general from two-star in order to assume the role of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Hegseth said the military currently has 44 positions for generals and admirals in the highest rank, though the DOD personnel website’s March report on current force structures said the military had 38 4-stars on active duty and one — an Air National Guard general — in the reserves (by comparison, the military has 150 three-star officers, 263 two-stars and 366 one-star officers).
Twelve four-star officers serve in the Pentagon on the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the Chairman and Vice Chairman, and the chief and vice chief of each service branch. Those positions are the only four-star jobs in both the Space Force and Marine Corps.
Close to a dozen other four-star generals and admirals oversee so-called unified combatant commands. Those include both major regional commands like U.S. Central Command and Southern Command, along with commands focused on particular areas of expertise, like U.S. Special Operations Command or U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees all U.S. nuclear forces.
The Army, Navy and Air Force each have several more four-stars who oversee broad areas of each service, like the Army’s training and material components, or all the Air Force units in the Pacific.
A Pentagon spokesperson did not respond to questions from Task & Purpose on the timeline of the cuts or whether each service would decide for itself where the cuts would come to, instead citing Hegseth’s video announcement.
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