President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth are not joking around when it comes to ensuring that our Armed Forces look and perform like actual warfighters. On Tuesday Sept 29, 2025 in Quantico Virginia, the President and the War Secretary spoke to several top-level Military Leaders and addressed Secretary Hegseth’s top ten initiatives for transforming the Armed Forces to a culture of lethality, precision, and mission focus. For far too long, Service members have lamented the gradual decline of the Armed Forces that has been accelerated by an ill-advised focus on social justice issues and woke ideologies instead of physical fitness, training, weapons handling, systems proficiencies, and every form of military focused necessity. The rebirth of a true military culture rising again is a great breath of fresh air. Hegseth’s 10 directives are as follows.
- Ending politically correct leadership
Politically correct leadership seeks to offend no one, all the while creating the most offensive and abusive environment possible where good performers are marginalized and poor performers are entitled and given a pass for their behavior. It is also inept in terms of who it wants to support and promote instead of advancing personnel based on their merit, fitness, and overall ability. In the profession of Arms, it is critical that warfighters explicitly state was is unacceptable in order for the acceptable to become the standard, and the PC mindset chooses to coddle and allow practices that are harmful to good order and discipline in order to be viewed as more socially inclusive.
- Imposing new physical fitness standards
There is no profession in the world like the profession of Arms and the most fundamental and necessary component of that profession, alongside law enforcement, is the ability to be lethal. Simply put, the purpose of the United States Armed Forces is to defeat our adversaries in the legal application of our mission. And in order to effectively execute our mission, a servicemember must be in top physical condition and remain dedicated to their fitness and conditioning. The imposition and enforcement of physical standards must be prioritized once again for the welfare of the unit and our mission. At the same time, the sight of an overweight servicemember runs completely contrary to our warfighter ethos and signals a bad optic to our allies and enemies alike.
- Tackling ideological garbage
Having personal thoughts and opinions on various moral, social, and political topics is a completely normal human affair. But there is a right place and time to have those conversations with others. For a Military unit, letting those topics creep in as a priority as opposed to unit objectives, training, and team building, can be a disaster. The American public expects its warfighters to keep them safe, not to be political commentators or social influencers. In years past, LGBT sensitivity training and transgender surgery protocol replaced familiarity with relevant unit, job, and technical specialty training. That era is over.
- Re-instating discipline and grooming standards
There is a reason that young men and women are given completely new haircuts and an entirely new set of clothes and uniforms completely matching their fellow recruits. Unit cohesion and uniformity are critical to the profession of arms for the purpose of instilling discipline, unity, and a shared identity as warfighters. The same goes for grooming standards and haircuts for both males and females. One of the major realities of military service is the sacrifice of personal preferences and freedoms, and grooming standards that emphasize hair length, uniform wear, and all other standards related to personal appearance and military bearing are critical to a squared away unit. And it is those sacrifices that are made that keep our nation free.
- Focusing on military strength
During my twilight tour at Ft. Sam Houston where I served as a Preventive Medicine Instructor, I would occasionally have an aside where the Navy Chief came out of me and I had to remind servicemembers that they were in the “US Armed Forces”! But my language was a little different to provide emphasis. Nonetheless, to achieve maximum operational effectiveness, we have to continue pressing in and embracing an ethos of excellence in all we do. We need to continue to achieve newer and higher standards and levels of excellence and be in the best shape physically. We need the best training available and possess the best weapons systems and technological understanding on how to utilize those systems. It is imperative to embrace our unity and rich heritage of victory. We need to soar with our strength and celebrate it.
- Eliminating anonymous complaints
The United States military has gone down a negative trail of allowing a culture that allows and empowers complainers to express their grievances through certain forums and channels without having to identify themselves. Now to be clear, there are definitively situations that need to be addressed and corrected within the chain of command, but the anonymous complaint system has been grossly taken advantage of. It has become a place where too many spineless and capricious individuals look to smear their leaders just because they are unhappy with being held accountable. On the contrary, a better system is the lowest level resolution system. If a servicemember has an issue with a peer or even leader, they should always be welcome to voice their position in a respectful and appropriate manner that is conducive to good order and discipline. But the era of complainers and social media keyboard warriors bashing their chain of command in an anonymous manner is coming to an end.
- Emphasizing Merit
In the United States Navy’s personal evaluation instruction, it states that the 3 criteria items for evaluating a Sailor is merit, fitness, and overall ability. Other service instructions most certainly place merit as a top priority. Unfortunately, other factors like political connections, nepotism, and adherence to programs that are secondary to the Unit’s main mission have become the vehicle of promotion for many. There is absolutely nothing in the Armed Forces that is more frustrating for a Sailor than being trained to do a job, doing it well, and then seeing others promoted before you because they joined the right “social” committee, or participated in the right “community relations” projects. Such activities, though not wrong, are ill-advisedly called leadership material, while performing your job is marginalized as “just what you’re supposed to do.”. That also is coming to an end.
- Redefining Toxic Leadership
This topic could be made into a good book. In Secretary Hegseth’s definition, toxic leadership is leadership that does not properly train a servicemember for their job and the mission. A bad and incorrect definition of toxic leadership has unfortunately been tagged on firm and responsible military leaders who hold their units accountable for maintaining standards. Those leaders have been mislabeled as toxic simply because their imposition of discipline and accountability makes lazy and entitled individuals uncomfortable. No Military leader is perfect and mistakes may be made as a zero-defect standard is impossible. However, a serious, focused, and mission-oriented Leader is exactly what our Armed Forces needs and what are young people deserve in order to bring out their best.
- Purging woke practices
As stated earlier in eliminating ideological garbage, there is no room or time for a serious military unit to be consumed with climate change, critical race theories, sexual orientation sensitivity training, and all other forms of woke talking points. Those issues can certainly be debated at a university campus, public library, or Starbucks, but certainly not on the battlefield, deck plates, or halls of the Pentagon.
- Revising personal record retention
The U.S. Military is a very distinct culture in that it demands a degree of exertion and sacrifice like no other and imposes a cost on someone and their family like no other profession can. That said, Service members will make mistakes. Some are very squared away and don’t make many. There are some that make buffoonish mistakes but fortunately learn their lesson and move on. The point is that as their career progresses, they should not be walking on eggshells afraid to take risks or make decisions because they are afraid of their past. A leader that is too risk-averse will not be able to fully advocate for; and effectively lead their unit to their highest potential. But it is incumbent on ranking and promotion boards to fairly evaluate a servicemembers career and not hold certain mistakes against them as they are trying to move on. People do move on. They make mistakes, learn from them, and become better leaders and people.