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Hegseth’s All Hands

by AW1Ed••59


SecWar on Back to Basics

Pete Hegseth had a lot to say when he summoned military leaders. Here are some facts and context

By JULIE WATSON, LAURIE KELLMAN and DEEPTI HAJELA

NEW YORK (AP) — Armed with a 10-point plan and pacing a stage in Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth enumerated for hundreds of assembled military leaders just how much of the force’s policy, philosophy and culture will change for more than 2 million Americans in uniform under President Donald Trump’s command.

“For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,” Hegseth said. The approach, he said, made the Pentagon “less capable and less lethal.” Hegseth talked up his and Trump’s focus on “the warrior ethos” and “peace through strength.”

“No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship, no more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris,” he declared.

AP News

I don’t count on the AP for informed “context” in anything, much less military readiness. Color me surprised. This article is actually pretty well balanced with some solid research. Props where props are due when journo’s actually try.

 

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59 thoughts on “Hegseth’s All Hands”

  1. “For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,”

    Including most of the people sitting in that room listening to his speech.

    I doubt this point was lost on them.

  2. Well, if the difference between a “Department of Defense” and a “Department of War” is that the latter focuses on both defense and war, I’m onboard. We’ve had far too many “DOD[insert acronym here]” stuff that focused on feel-goods and other nonsense. War doesn’t feel good, but it’s sometimes necessary. Cool, you’re the First! in whatever achievement you’ve made, but there’s a big difference between a war fighter like Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. and some minority female passing Ranger School before getting the minimal amount of time in charge of Infantry units in order to skyrocket through the ranks.

  3. Good.
    Now he needs to smoke some of those leaders until they remember what they are there for.

  4. I wonder how many will bail because they got their feelings hurt, or it hit too close to where they live. On the flip side of the coin, I wonder how many will stay in to throw sand in the gears for those they feel were wronged.

  5. I watched his address and was impressed. He called out exactly what has been done to degrade our military starting with Clinton. Hopefully a conservative next Presidential administration continues his targeted refocusing of our military. Seeing fat bodies in a military uniform disgusts me. In any uniform for that matter. No pride in self means no pride in service and you’re only there for a paycheck.

  6. If you want to laugh, go over to Democratic Underground or Daily Kos and read about this. Before hand, it was all “he’s going to make them sign a loyalty oath!!! He’s going to fire them! Ree!!” Now it’s all about, “he disrespected the generals. See how mad they looked in these pictures. They get it. How dare he talk to them like this? They should use this opportunity to stage a coup! He put them all at risk by gathering them together. Ree!!”

        2. He looks like a rag-bag. Are they in the field? Are they inspecting training? If so, where’s their gear? Where’s their weapons?

          Nothing pisses me off more than having rear-echelon MF’s “Checking training,” and violating uniform standards that I enforce on my troops. Set the example, damn it.

          At least the guy behind wide-load Milley has a decent crush in his patrol cap.

          1. I’ve lost track of all variations in camo over the
            decades as well as who is authorized and why.
            Seems to hide a lot of on board annomalies…
            Back in the day everyone was OD and the
            only camo guys were SF.
            Nowadays everyone looks like a duck hunter.

            1. And while you raise a valid point, I have a serious question: Why the fuck does Navy wear camo on ships and subs??? That’s even more stupid than the “aquaflage”. At least dungarees had a purpose……

              2. Because when we ditched the aquaflage we had quite a few of the Type III green camo uniforms. Plus having one design was cost effective so we just put everyone in them. The Sailors on ships who do the dirty work still get coveralls.

                When a Sailor transitions to shore duty they already have the camo uniform so they do not have to buy new stuff. Lightens the seabag having one uniform.

            2. Must be an army thing. As far as I know Marines have been wearing camo since the late 70’s I believe (not counting what was worn in the Viet of the Nam). I enlisted back in 1981 and was issued camo patterned sateen’s but around 1984 they switched over to the woodland pattern cammies which I hated. I thought they looked like shit with those wide collars and the top blouse button being so low that the neck area was wide open. Just saying.

        3. Well, there was a reason why, as an officer rose in rank during the days of wooden ships, the sideboys he rated went up in number.

          But, those days are long gone. Time to put down the pizza and hit the running track!

        4. When I was in the field for lengthy periods of time, precious little PISSED me off more than some BN or BDE HQ Ossifer or SNCO coming out to the field sites to “Checkup” and “Motivate” us wearing a squeaky-clean uniform and gear, especially the ones who would get on us for being dirty out there!

          1. Ah, “shiny boots” leadership– “positive eyewash is the sign of a good unit” and “credibility” said of an Armor All-ed tactical vehicle in the motorpool.

  7. If he was a TAH reader, he would have used Anonymous”s
    comment about while you are training for diversity and inclusion, someone else is training for war, and when you meet, they will win….

  8. I have to say, his final words, when he told them to “move out and draw fire”,, had me giggling like a little girl!!

    1. I use to say that to my soldiers, in combat, on the line in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Somebody had to be on point. Even in Humvees.

    2. Just got done listening to his entire speech and those last
      words had me amused as the order ten-hut was given.
      I’ll bet a few diapers are gonna need changing…

  9. Sounds like a call to a good old fashioned mission focus for the Military as opposed to continuing social experiments based upon delusions.

    A call to fitness for combat as well. I like it.

    I had to perform based upon physical testing and weight management, so I see no reason not to continue that kind of readiness philosophy tied to being lethal in your MOS (assuming it is a combat related MOS) and a capable effective support / logistics outfit.

  11. Room full of perfumed princes getting braced up and given the word.

    Dave Hackworth is smiling in Valhalla.

    3. Jocko has a huge man crush on Hack. He’s devoted several podcasts to him. Of all the distinguished vets he’s had on his program or covered – I think Hackworth is his favorite. He provided a forward to the new printings of About Face.

  12. All these lefties with their panties in a wad, upset because Hegseth was disrespectful, blunt, racist, sexist, whatever. This ain’t a corporate boardroom, kiddies. Your feelings are irrelevant. He just told a boatload of flag rank officers to get back to doing what they signed up to do. If they can’t do that for whatever reason, they know where their S1 is, and retirement is an option. It’s about fuckin’ time.

    1. “…upset because Hegseth was disrespectful…”

      Newflash to the whiners: Hegseth is the BOSS! At a minimum the four stars need to be taken down a peg. I served on four star staffs. They were treated and acted as gods. One sour look from them and your tour (and maybe your career) was in the shitter.

    3. From the stories I’ve heard from y’all, AB Brother, AB Son, Navy Brother…
      hurt feelings were and should not allowed in the military.

  13. So I follow some navy pages on the book of faces, the amount of butthurt about it being “shared with the American public” made me a bit sick.

    Who cares if he called them out on the national stage, they (and all of us formerly) work for that very public!

    Points for knife handing his way through their feelings!

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    1. The higher up the totem pole, the more ego gets involved. Sure, I’m overanalyzing a meme here, but my personal experience was with my time on brigade staff. When I first arrived, our morning formations for HHC were mostly E-6 and below. A handful of E-7s and one or two junior officers saw maybe 30 people turn out from our 150+ company. It goes without saying that the brigade commander and CSM weren’t always going to be there, but when a new 1SG took over, he made it pretty clear that he expected every staff NCO and officer at formation. The brigade leadership supported him, and though it wasn’t until his successor took the helm, eventually we had at least 90% of the company at formation, including the E-8s and O-4s who held themselves above the “lowly” CPT and 1SG in charge of HHC.

      I never noticed this in MDW, but unlike 4IBCT, 3ID, we were only administratively assigned to HHC USAG and never saw the actual company or even HQ BN US Army leadership or staff, outside of in-and-out processing and promotion board. If MDW had a formation or mandatory event, everyone was there unless they outranked the CG (and of course, no one did).

      My wife was gloating over Trump not getting applauded by the GOs/FOs. I haven’t seen or heard any of the footage, but I wanted to tell her that 99% of those same senior “leaders” would have fits if their subordinates didn’t give them proper respect. I like the style, though, of a celebrity turned non-consecutive double President and a Major turned SecDef treating these overpaid and self-important royals like they’ve doubtlessly treated their own troops since they were O-5s, if not O-3s.

  17. I could always understand the BAMs (no disrespect intended, just being comical) having lighter or lesser physical standards than the male Marines, but I can’t recall ever seeing more than a few who looked like shit in the uniform unless they were drunk and that includes male and female Jarheads. That was back in the early 80’s, and back then female Marines were not in combat related MOSs as far as I know and I was okay with their physical requirements being lighter, but as far as how we presented ourselves, to me there was never any viable excuse for looking like a bag of rags in our uniform. I believed that nearly every Marine took great pride in how they presented themselves. But if you’re telling me that in today’s military, physical requirements are being reduced for males and even trannys, that serve in line companies that’s disgusting. I don’t care what you are, if you carry a weapon of war (except that sissy, wiener Tampon Timmie) the physical standards should be the same. Can’t pass the requirements, then go join the Peace Corps. No wonder the world has lost respect for our military and that both sickens me and saddens me.

  18. “…well, you don’t need diversity to just go out and kill people…[b]ut you do need diversity if what you really need to do is problem-solve.”

    Killing people and breaking their stuff IS a way to solve the problems we’re facing in the world today. When your enemy actually says women are less than human, throws gay people off of buildings, and HATES DOGS you don’t really have a reason to rely on DIPlomacy.

    1. The military does not exist to “problem solve”. The military exists to kill people and break shit when the problem solvers (diplomats) fail.

      1. The Dems have been treating the U.S. military since the Clinton administration as a social experiment, I’m happy that this is happening but it’s 30 years overdue.

        1. Clinton was too busy trying to get laid and not have Hildabeast find out. Plus Newt Gingrich was kicking his ass from the Senate so he wasn’t really interested in the military, except for the whole “Don’t ask, don’t tell” bullshit.

  19. Chasing the Green Dragon has hurt readiness in ways incalculable. Green ammo. Green transpo. Green power (the amount of Carson that was paneled over is just astounding).

    The ammo bit hurts the most. Shells and boolits that aren’t as stable as what was fielded in the long ago is just pathetic.

    True story: Benning 2005, we were still using 50 cal API made in WW2 out of the 107s. No failures to fire and the stuff was damned consistent.
    Just wash your hands after opening the lead sintered galvanized tins and you’ll be ok.

    1. Maybe they’ll finally switch the copper core in the M855A1 round back to lead again

    1. Seems pretty cut and dried. I’m liking the stuff about mandatory training. If that online training course hasn’t changed from one year to the next, why redo it? Even as a DA civilian, I do hours of online training that has no relevance to what I do. Hours of derivative classification training. I have a high clearance, but I have the same classification/declassification authority as VP Biden. I don’t necessarily need to know how the sausage is made.

  21. I’m older than dirt so keep that in mind! In 1973 the 25th INF Division had PT every morning at 0700, The post was closed to all traffic EVERYONE did PT if you were in the Hospital and Ambulatory you had to go outside and stand until PT was over. After 1974 when the Army did the reduction in force (RIF) All the Combat leaders were replaced with the Good Ole Boy network or ring Knocker as they were called. The Army went straight down the Shit hole in lightning speed. By 1975 we were VOLAR so they lowered the requirements for enlistment, We have about a 10% fighting force who are mostly Special Ops guy. We need change before it is too late.

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