Hegseth orders major revamp of military education

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday ordered sweeping changes to the U.S. military’s professional education system, prioritizing skills that will win wars — an overhaul that comes as the Pentagon chief faces mounting calls for his impeachment .

“When a commandant approves a curriculum, the essential question before them is not, ‘Is this intellectually fashionable?’ . . . The only question that matters to the American republic is this: Will it help us achieve victory?” Hegseth said in a speech at the Naval War College.

A memo signed by Hegseth released the same day lays out 33 reforms and directives across the military’s Senior Service Colleges and Intermediate Level Education institutions, to be “effective immediately.”

He argues that professional military education (PME) “has stagnated” and drifted from its core purpose of preparing officers to fight and win wars, trading “combat readiness for theory” and indulging “ideological distractions over practical warfighting.”

“The fundamental purpose of the Armed Forces of the United States is to fight and win our Nation’s wars. There is no substitute for victory,” Hegseth writes.

“We will evaluate our educational institutions by a singular standard: ‘Does this program forge leaders who will win America’s wars?’” he later adds. “If an activity, course, or policy does not contribute directly to lethality, readiness, and strategic victory, it has no place in this Department.”

The memo is another step in Hegseth’s push to overhaul the military’s higher education, an effort that has seen the freezing of appointments of civilian staff to tenured positions at U.S. military service academies; the cancellation of members of the military attending some of the country’s top-ranked colleges and universities; and the banning of hundreds of library books at the Naval Academy.

War colleges are separate from the service academies and offer professional military education to Pentagon civilians, high-ranking officers and international partners, focusing on national security, joint operations and strategy.

Hegseth’s effort comes as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) plans to reintroduce the impeachment articles against him Monday afternoon over his role in the ongoing and deeply unpopular Iran war.

The impeachment push has been gaining steam on Capitol Hill since Massie first introduced the idea in September, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) — likely to become the House Speaker come January — on Sunday saying that he is a “hard yes” when it comes to impeaching the Pentagon chief.

President Trump has publicly stood behind Hegseth, but the commander-in-chief as of late has been asking advisers and allies about his defense secretary’s standing, The Hill previously reported .

Hegseth has remained defiant, posting a video to social media last week that describes Massie’s articles as “sham articles of impeachment” authored by a “disgruntled, defeated congressman.”

In his push to change PME, Hegseth directs institutions to refocus their mission statements “toward achieving decisive military victory in combat,” and orders mandatory, end-of-course wargames or comprehensive exams “to test student mastery of core national security and joint warfighting material,” an event that he says should be heavily weighted toward the student’s final grade.

In addition, he orders the realignment of the civilian-faculty ratio at schools “to ensure that the majority of full-time faculty possess direct military experience and defense experience.” Newly arrived civilian faculty members will be put under three-year, performance-based contracts evaluated on teaching effectiveness and national security research.

The memo also establishes a “warfighter chair” at all senior service colleges, to be filled with “high-performing” colonels or lieutenant colonels who have come from operational deployments in the past two years. They will be responsible for injecting real-time combat lessons into the curriculum.

Incremental adjustments will not achieve this transformation. Effective immediately, all directed reform tasks detailed in the attached implementation directive will be executed across commands and institutions,” Hegseth writes.