[September 24, 2026] Announced earlier this week, the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth directed the military to begin “testing generals” for warfighting abilities. Hegseth appears to believe that Flag Officer promotions are not based on their ability to fight and win wars. I agree with him on that issue, but not on the “why.”
For a leadership website that I run, the question of why leadership fails is a good one to undertake. The answers to that question underpin one of the biggest issues in large, complex organizations, whether military or not. How do we select the best leaders? Even a cursory study of history tells a long story of bad and good choices, but not why.
Hegseth’s line: the evaluation is supposed to “stratify their ability to fight, adapt, and win,” so “our flag is carried by our most lethal and most adaptable leaders.” He called it an “objective equalizer” because “the scenario only cares about operational decisions under pressure.”
This follows Hegseth’s May memo directing that “joint warfighting ability” be factored into promotion and advancement. He tasked Stu Scheller a year ago to challenge “generations of promotion assumptions.” Scheller’s diagnosis, which will sound familiar to anyone who sat a board or watched one: people learn to look good to the boss rather than be good at the job, and the current system has no standalone measure of who can actually command in a fight.
Hegseth’s public critique of the Flag ranks and what serving and retired generals have said about their own weakest points are similar, but the “why” differs.
Hegseth has been consistent since The War on Warriors and the Quantico speech of 30 September 2025. The Flag ranks, in his telling, were captured by the wrong culture and then promoted for the wrong reasons. Promotion for identity (not competence), softeners at the top, ideological debris, career navigation over command, and risk aversion dressed as professionalism. And there are too many Flag Officers.
Retired and current Flag Officers believe the problem goes back further than the last two Democrat presidents who green-lighted many of these problems. They believe that institutionalized careerism, risk aversion, failure of candor to civilians, strategic poverty (meaning they can’t think broad enough), accountability that runs the wrong way, and legacy over truth.
Both Hegseth’s and Flag Officers’ reasoning can both be true. A system that already rewarded looking good to the boss will absorb whatever the civilian leadership of the moment wants: identity metrics in one decade, loyalty tests in another. In both, the rank is the objective, not the command.
If Hegseth is right that ideology was the main rot, stripping DEI and adding a wargame should change who pins on the first star. If the older critique is right, the same officers will simply learn the new exam the way they learned the old way.
I’ve known many Flag Officers in all branches of the U.S. and foreign militaries. Two of their greatest weaknesses are: an inability to think and act strategically (they can’t even define it correctly) and a lack of important priorities like “mission and men.” If your priorities are not to protect and defend the United States, and not taking care of the troops, you are worthless as a Flag Officer.
“Testing Generals” is just a start.
Two of the absolute worst I’ve seen since I retired, and who are the face of these terrible Flag Officer problems, are GEN Mark Milley and GEN Lloyd Austin.
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I agree with you Gen. Satterfield that Milley and Austin are the worst of the worst. Milley is a traitor. And Austin was just a DEI hire. Both might have been good at the start of their “career” but they became ideologically compromised. Both are smart idiots.