Priorities for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth

OPINION:

Following his confirmation, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is poised to be one of modern history’s most transformative national security leaders. In past decades, the Pentagon — steered by industrialists, politicians, lobbyists and retired generals — did little to focus the military on producing combat warriors, not social justice ones.

Without a doubt, the Pentagon and its military branches need much reform. Mr. Hegseth is the person who inspires the badly needed changes to attain his stated goal, which is to “Restore the warrior ethos in everything that we do, rebuild our military and reestablish deterrence.” These goals go beyond ending the politically correct nonsense of DEI and woke policies, distractions that failed to do a single thing to make our forces more lethal or combat-ready. Mr. Hegseth, having experienced war personally, is superbly prepared to restore America’s combat power.

Nowhere is reform more needed than in the Army, a service near and dear to Mr. Hegseth. He knows the U.S. Army is the foundational service in waging conventional war, currently termed large-scale combat operations in Pentagon parlance. Mr. Hegseth also understands that nearly two decades of counterinsurgency wars gutted the Army’s structure and capability to fight in conventional conflicts.

Combat divisions — long the primary agent to synchronize combat power — were sliced up to form brigade combat teams, a structure designed to support the frequent rotations of units into and out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Essential capabilities, like the artillery, air defense and engineers, were diminished to man brigade combat teams. While brigade combat teams were effective in door-to-door and area security operations, they proved insufficient in synchronizing combat power for large-scale combat operations in subsequent war games.

Fortunately, the Army has returned to the proven division structure while embracing efforts to rebuild the artillery, air defense and other combat capabilities shelved during population-centric counterinsurgency to man and deploy brigade combat teams. But much more must be done, and Mr. Hegseth has that opportunity.

First, the Army is too small to meet the potential for land wars in the Indo-Pacific against our primary competitor, China, and to contend with conflicts in Europe and the Middle East that could erupt simultaneously or sequentially. Of the dozen active-duty Army divisions today, half have just two brigades as opposed to a typical three-brigade configuration. In other words, on paper, the Army may claim 12 divisions. In reality, it has nine.

Moreover, division artillery formations — vital in warfare — are threadbare, with just enough artillery to barely support the two or three brigades of a division. Indeed, the division artillery lacks the necessary cannon and rocket artillery to deal with deadly enemy counterfire unless higher headquarters at the corps level provide such capabilities from their own scarce artillery brigades.

Air defense, which must contend with swarms of drones, is woefully lacking. And the support structure for all supporting units — logistics, ammunition, maintenance and repair — is likewise insufficient. Mr. Hegseth will understand how this must be immediately addressed, not only in recruiting manpower but also in rebuilding a robust divisional structure to prepare for conventional wars that may come our way.

Second, the Army’s byzantine acquisition structure is cumbersome, slow and unreliable in delivering the necessary combat systems and equipment to our soldiers. The fix is not simply reform, the most overused and ineffective word in Washington. What is required is a renaissance in acquisition, testing and fielding.

Step one is to abolish redundant four-star headquarters that have proliferated in the Army and done nothing to speed up the acquisition of systems that are needed now, five years from now and well into the future. The acquisition approach must be streamlined and focused by the Army’s warfighter community, not industry captains. Moreover, we must consider the very capable systems our allies have produced that can accelerate the acquisition process.

Third, the Army must increase funding for realistic combat training, especially live-fire exercises. The good news is the Army has superb training centers, including the world-class National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, which provides vital lessons for units preparing for warfare. We must increase the capacity for the Army to rotate increased numbers of units through this realistic training. To win in battle, you must realistically train to fight. We can’t do that in classrooms pondering social justice jabberwocky.

Finally, Mr. Hegseth wants to improve recruitment across the services. We need combat-capable warriors to defend America. The damage done by wokeism to the warrior ethos is disgraceful. As the saying goes: If you want to hunt ducks, go where the ducks are. It’s true of recruiting. Go where there are patriots who embrace American values, and you will find warriors in waiting.

Mr. Hegseth can take a significant step toward deterrence by reinvigorating our Army’s structure, acquisition, training and manning.

• L. Scott Lingamfelter is a retired U.S. Army colonel and combat veteran (1973-2001) and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates (2002-2018). He is the author of “Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War” (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) and “Yanks in Blue Berets: American U.N. Peacekeepers in the Middle East” (UPK, 2023).