Hegseth Mandates Military Education Reform

Declaring that the fundamental duty of America's armed forces is to assure victory in war, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the nation's senior service colleges must have a curriculum that underpins that duty.

Hegseth spoke to about 700 students and faculty members of the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, today. The college offers graduate-level education in naval strategy and organization.

After the secretary spoke, the War Department issued an eight-page memorandum that mandates reforms across the department's professional military education.

Speaking to the service members, Hegseth credited the intellect of the officer corps as a weapons system "no less decisive than our aircraft carriers, our armored brigade combat teams, or our nuclear deterrent."

While for decades, the nation's military leaders have studied leadership, strategy and statecraft, the secretary said an unyielding academic truth is the fundamental duty of ensuring victory.

"It's the unsparing standard against which every regulation, every doctrine, every budget dollar and every academic syllabus should be judged," he said. "To be sure there are plenty of other important considerations in military life - ethics, logistics, administration, diplomacy. But all of them are in service of victory."

The senior service colleges can't passively confer credentials or be an "insulated salon for intellectual leisure," he continued. "We cannot teach victory in an intellectual vacuum."

The nation is in the most far-reaching strategic calibration of its national security posture since the end of World War II, Hegseth said, adding that the pivot is deeper and more profound than the fall of the Soviet Union.

To tackle this challenge, the secretary said military institutions need to be forward thinking instead of focused on the past.

"When our war college graduates walk across the stage and take command, their minds cannot be anchored on the strategic consensus of a vanished world," he said, adding that the service colleges need to be teaching students how to think in favor of indoctrinating them into what to think.

Civilian and military institutions have different missions with different objectives, the secretary said, and accreditation bodies designed for civilian colleges shouldn't dictate the standards, governance or curriculum of a military institution.

"You are set apart on purpose," he said. "The American people need you set apart on purpose to play a distinct role in our republic."

Freedom of debate and the exploration of ideas in a military school should be aimed at outthinking and defeating enemies on the battlefield, he said.

"The reforms that I'm directing today are designed to reinforce military education, focused on winning our nation's wars and reinforcing each person's oath to our Constitution," he said. "The far greater challenge is erecting educational architecture that is capable of building architects of victory, which is what we need all of you to be."

Wars aren't won at an abstract strategic level, Hegseth said. Strategy succeeds or fails at the point where it meets an adversary.

The memorandum Hegseth released after the speech announces 33 new directives - a complete overhaul - to reform the senior service colleges, "to forge leaders of unmatched competence, sound moral judgment and resolute warrior ethos."

Among the changes will be the establishment of super intelligence-assisted joint wargaming and high-stress, decision-making scenarios as the centerpiece of senior officer evaluation.

"No longer will jointness be reduced to an Army colonel and a Navy captain sharing coffee in the same seminar room. True jointness is forged under competitive operational friction," he said. "Our service colleges will execute interconnected capstone war games linking live, virtual and constructive forces against domains, testing students against complex, unscripted, peer adversary maneuvers."

These wargames will feed directly into joint warfighter exercises and evaluations, Hegseth said, alluding to the legendary Louisiana maneuvers of the 1930s, where Army Gen. George C. Marshall stress tested the officer corps, identifying leaders like Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George Patton, "who possessed the operational grit to lead America to victory in a world war."

Every prospective general and flag officer will be tested this way, Hegseth said.

"Promotion to senior rank will not be an administrative reward for longevity. It will be earned by demonstrating the intellectual agility, lethal operational competence and moral resolve required to win in combat," he said. "We demand immense change from our colleges, but we know that we cannot demand world-class performance from an enterprise suffering from institutional decay."

Hegseth finished his speech by telling the service members of the importance of their ongoing military education.

"Our adversaries are studying every day, preparing for the moment," he said. "They will challenge you and try to kill you and break our national will and our national power. You must be smarter than they are. You must be bolder than they are, and you must be more lethal than they are."