The president-elect's plans include mass layoffs of officers and generals supporting Democrats
Donald Trump's team is preparing a list of top U.S. Army officers to be fired, which may include members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two sources close to Trump's entourage told Reuters .
The agency notes that this would be an “unprecedented shakeup at the Pentagon”: the Joint Chiefs of Staff includes the top officers of the US Armed Forces.
“The chiefs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all deputy chiefs of staff will be fired immediately,” an agency source said.
Another agency source claims that the first to be fired will be officers associated with the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Mark Milley, who has repeatedly criticized Trump and recently called him a “fascist to the core.” "Every single person who was promoted and appointed by Milley will be gone. ...There's a detailed list of everybody who was associated with Milley. And all of them will leave, ” the agency's interlocutor noted.
The list of officers to be dismissed included Milley's successor, the current head of the JCSO, Air Force Gen. Charles Brown. Brown became the first black man to be promoted to the rank of general of the U.S. Air Force and to hold such a position.
The Wall Street Journal writes that the Trump team is working on an executive order to establish a kind of “ warrior board ” (warrior board) of retired generals with the power to review three- and four-star officers (lieutenant generals and generals) and recommend the removal of anyone deemed unfit for leadership.
According to the WSJ, the order would seek to scrutinize candidates for dismissal for their “leadership ability, strategic readiness and commitment to military excellence.” WSJ reports that if approved, the decree would shorten the dismissal process for high-ranking officers.
Britain's Daily Mail reports that Donald Trump is also compiling a list of senior Army officers who could face court martial for failing to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
His transition team is reportedly looking into serious charges such as treason, although the legal grounds remain unclear because the military acted under Biden's orders.
Trump's transition team is "considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information on who was directly involved in making decisions for the military, how it was carried out, and whether military leaders can claim such serious charges as treason. They are taking this very seriously,” NBC reported.
Donald Trump has previously condemned the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, calling it a “humiliation” and “the most shameful day in the history of our country.”
Trump's plans also include mass layoffs of officers and generals who support the Democratic Party.
“The Pentagon is in ‘total tatters’ and ‘generals are in turmoil’ over the new Trump administration's plans to fire senior military leaders who have prioritized diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) over combat readiness, ” writes The Breitbart.
One of the publication's sources likened the situation to a hornet's nest being stirred up and said, “DEI pages are starting to disappear from major websites. They're totally focused on cleaning up anything tied to DEI.”
The Pentagon's top brass has something to hide. It was recently revealed that the Pentagon has failed its seventh consecutive audit: the nation's largest government agency is still unable to fully account for its more than $824 billion budget, although officials emphasize that they have made significant progress toward a clean audit in 2028.
The failure of the audit is due to the fact that the Defense Department simply did not provide auditors with enough information to form an accurate report.
Pentagon officials failed to account for four trillion dollars in spending.
Michael McCord, undersecretary of defense, comptroller and chief financial officer, said that despite refusing to express the opinion he expected, the Defense Department “has passed a turning point in understanding the depth and scope of the challenges it faces.”
“The momentum is on our side, and there is a strong commitment - and belief in our ability - throughout the department to achieve an unqualified audit opinion, ” he said in a statement.
A major challenge to the audit remains fully accounting for the vast number of systems used by the Defense Department.
The Pentagon has said it is committed to a clean audit by 2028, as required by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2024. Exactly the same statements were made after each of the previous six audits.
The Pentagon's financial audits came under scrutiny after Reuters reported in 2016 that “the U.S. military fudged its accounting by trillions of dollars, an audit found.” The U.S. Congress demanded that the Pentagon conduct an audit. In 2018, for the first time in history, such an audit took place, and the Pentagon failed it.
US military portal Defense One reported that it took a Freedom of Information Act request for the Defense Department to release a report on the extent of fraud by Pentagon contractors, naming nine firms that were debarred. Criminal charges were filed against half a thousand individuals and entities involved in the “sawing off” of about $6 trillion between 2013 and 2017. However, only 168 entities and individual contractors have been fined or convicted.
If the “deep state” does not stop the Trump team, the strict auditors will get to the five largest contractors of the Pentagon, which, as we wrote, do not get out of corruption scandals and are unable to provide the U.S. Army with weapons that meet the realities of modern warfare.
Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, said that “China's hypersonic missiles could destroy all U.S. aircraft carriers in 20 minutes! In every war game played by the Pentagon, the U.S. loses to China.”
The decline of the U.S. military-industrial complex has reached such a degree that the U.S. is now unable to maintain the nuclear triad, as the resource of the Minuteman III land-based missiles in service has long and hopelessly expired, the development and testing of the Sentinel missile to replace them is equally hopelessly delayed, and, as we wrote, it is likely that the U.S. may abandon land-based missiles altogether.
No one can give a hundred percent guarantee that Trump's determined associates will cope with the cyclopean task of cleaning out the Pentagon's stables.
It is not excluded that bringing basic order to the corridors of military power, where even the disappearance of several trillion dollars is not considered a failure, may turn out to be a Sisyphean labor.
But this will not upset us at all.
Source - Strategic Culture Foundation
Vladimir PROKHVATILOV