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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to fire the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force represents an opening salvo in his push to remake the military into a force that is more aggressive on the battlefield and potentially less hindered by the laws of armed conflict.
Mr. Hegseth, in the Pentagon and during his meetings with troops last week in Europe, has spoken repeatedly about the need to restore a “warrior ethos” to a military that he insists has become soft, social-justice obsessed and more bureaucratic over the past two decades.
His decision to replace the military’s judge advocates general – typically three-star military officers – offers a sense of how he defines the ethos that he has vowed to instill.
The dismissals came as part of a broader push by Mr. Hegseth and President Trump, who late Friday also fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the country’s top military officer, as well as the first woman to lead the Navy and the vice chief of staff of the Air Force.
By comparison, the three fired judge advocates general, also known as “JAGs,” are far less prominent. Inside the Pentagon and on battlefields around the world, military lawyers aren’t decision makers. Their job is to provide independent legal advice to senior military officers so that they do not run afoul of U.S. law or the laws of armed conflict.
A senior military official with knowledge of the firings added that the military lawyers had “zero heads up” that they were being removed from office and that the top brass in the Army, Navy and Air Force were also caught unaware.
The unexplained dismissals prompted widespread concern. “In some ways that’s even more chilling than firing the four stars,” Rosa Brooks, a professor at Georgetown Law, wrote on X. “It’s what you do when you’re planning to break the law: you get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.”
The firings do not seem to be related to a single dispute but rather appear tied to Mr. Hegseth’s view of why the U.S. military struggled to achieve any significant victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he served in combat, and how he wants the military to operate under his leadership.
In his book, “The War on Warriors,” which was published last year, Mr. Hegseth castigates military lawyers for imposing overly restrictive rules of engagement on frontline troops, which he argues repeatedly allowed the enemy to score battlefield victories.
Mr. Hegseth derisively refers to the lawyers in the book as “jagoffs.” The term led Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and a West Point graduate, to ask Mr. Hegseth at a confirmation hearing whether he could effectively lead the military after disparaging it.
Mr. Hegseth’s views on the laws of war could also put him in conflict with some of the senior military generals who currently serve under him.
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