‘You might say, we’re ending the war on warriors,’ says Pete Hegseth in speech to military leaders
Hegseth is speaking now.
He says his speech is about “fixing decades of decay”.
“We’re clearing out the debris, removing distractions, clearing the way for leaders to be leaders,” says Hegseth. “You might say, we’re ending the war on warriors.”
Key events
“We’re not talking hot yoga and stretching – real, hard PT,” he says.
Hegseth says troops will be required to hit height and weight requirements and take fitness tests twice a year.
Troops will be required to perform physical fitness activity every day on duty, he adds.
“Most units do that already, but we’re codifying,” he says.
‘Fat troops are tiring to look at,’ says Hegseth
It all starts with physical fitness and appearance, he says.
He then compares this to his “regular hard PT”.
He says “it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops”.
It’s also unacceptable seeing “fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon, and leading commands around the country and the world”.
“It’s a bad look,” he says.
He says he is also adding a “combat field test” for combat arms units.
He says he’s also directing that “war-fighters in combat jobs execute their service fitness test at a gender-neutral, age norm, male standard scored above 70%”.
He announces the first of ten war department directives.
He says “each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat MOS for every designated combat arms position returns to the highest male standard only”.
“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive, don’t hurt anyone’s feelings leadership ends right now,” he says.
He says he wants “ruthless, dispassionate and common sense application of standards”.
He says the new war department “golden rule” is: “Do onto your unit as you would have done onto your own child’s unit.”
“Would you want him serving with fat or unfit or undertrained troops? Or alongside people who can’t make basic standards? Or in a unit where standards were lowered so certain types of troops could make it in? In a unit where leaders were promoted for reasons other than merit, performance and war-fighting? The answer’s not just no, it’s hell no,” he says.
He says he’s made it his mission “to uproot the obvious distractions that made us less capable and less lethal”.
But there are deeper problems “beneath the woke garbage”, he adds.
‘We are done with that shit’: Hegseth says military is done with diversity efforts in extraordinary speech to generals
He says the administration has “done a great deal to remove the social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department”.
“No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses,” he says. “No more climate change worship, no more division, distraction or gender delusions, no more debris.”
“We are done with that shit,” he adds.
“Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass headed, and we lost our way,” he says. “We became ‘the woke department’.”
“Not any more,” he adds.
He says the department has spent too long promoting “risk averse go-along to get-along conformists”.
He claims that “for too long, we’ve promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons – based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,” he says.
‘You might say, we’re ending the war on warriors,’ says Pete Hegseth in speech to military leaders
Hegseth is speaking now.
He says his speech is about “fixing decades of decay”.
“We’re clearing out the debris, removing distractions, clearing the way for leaders to be leaders,” says Hegseth. “You might say, we’re ending the war on warriors.”
Trump and Hegseth to address unprecedented gathering of military leaders
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is due to address the country’s top military leaders in Quantico, Virginia quite soon (it was billed as 8.15am ET). Donald Trump will also be attending, and it was revealed last night that he’ll also be speaking at 9am ET.
Last week, hundreds of generals and admirals were summoned at short notice and without explanation from around the world for this unusual meeting with Hegseth at at the Marine Corps Museum. They were initially not told why they were summoned in this unprecedented way, but it’s being reported that Hegseth is expected to talk about “warrior ethos”.
In an interview with NBC News, Trump said it would be “really just a very nice meeting talking about how well we’re doing militarily, talking about being in great shape, talking about a lot of good, positive things”.
“We have some great people coming in and it’s just an ‘esprit de corps,’” he said. “You know the expression ‘esprit de corps’? That’s all it’s about. We’re talking about what we’re doing, what they’re doing, and how we’re doing.”
