Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to fire the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force represents an opening salvo in his push to remake the military into a force that is more aggressive on the battlefield and potentially less hindered by the laws of armed conflict.
Mr. Hegseth, in the Pentagon and during his meetings with troops last week in Europe, has spoken repeatedly about the need to restore a “warrior ethos” to a military that he insists has become soft, social-justice obsessed and more bureaucratic over the past two decades.
His decision to replace the military’s judge advocate generals — typically three-star military officers — offers a sense of how he defines the ethos that he has vowed to instill.
The dismissals came as part of a broader push by Mr. Hegseth and President Trump, who late Friday also fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the country’s top military officer, as well as the first woman to lead the Navy and the vice chief of staff of the Air Force.
By comparison, the three fired judge advocate generals, also known as “JAGs,” are far less prominent. Inside the Pentagon and on battlefields around the world, military lawyers aren’t decision makers. Their job is to provide independent legal advice to senior military officers so that they do not run afoul of U.S. law or the laws of armed conflict.
Senior Pentagon officials said that Mr. Hegseth has had no contact with any of the three fired uniform military lawyers since taking office. None of the three — Lt. Gen. Joseph B. Berger III, Vice Adm. Christopher C. French and Rear Adm. Lia M. Reynolds — were even named in the Pentagon statement announcing their dismissal from decades of military service.
A senior miliary official with knowledge of the firings added that the military lawyers had “zero heads up” that they were being removed from office and that the top brass in the Army, Navy and Air Force were also caught unaware.
The unexplained dismissals prompted widespread concern. “In some ways that’s even more chilling than firing the four stars,” Rosa Brooks, a professor at Georgetown Law, wrote on X. “It’s what you do when you’re planning to break the law: you get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.”
The firings do not seem to be related to a single dispute but rather appear tied to Mr. Hegseth’s view of why the U.S. military struggled to achieve any significant victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he served in combat, and how he wants the military to operate under his leadership.
In his book, “The War on Warriors,” which was published last year, Mr. Hegseth castigates military lawyers for imposing overly restrictive rules of engagement on frontline troops, which he argues repeatedly allowed the enemy to score battlefield victories.
Mr. Hegseth derisively refers to the lawyers in the book as “jagoffs.” The term led Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and a West Point graduate, to ask Mr. Hegseth at a confirmation hearing whether he could effectively lead the military after disparaging it.
Mr. Hegseth’s account of this period in his book and his Senate testimony conflict with how battlefield rules of engagement were set during the wars. Senior officers in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as Gen. David H. Petraeus, came to believe that civilian deaths were turning the local population against U.S. forces and feeding the enemy’s ranks.
Ultimately, the rules belonged to battlefield leaders and not their military lawyers. The axiom — “lawyers advise, and commanders decide” — is a core piece of every military lawyer’s education, current and former JAG officers said.
Mr. Hegseth’s views on the laws of war could also put him in conflict with some of the senior military generals who currently serve under him.
In his book, he expresses repeated frustration with the international laws put in place after World War II to govern armed conflict. “What do you do if your enemy does not honor the Geneva Conventions?” he writes. “We never got an answer. Only more war. More casualties. And no victory.”
To many senior commanders, the “warrior ethos” isn’t just about killing the enemy or winning wars. It also includes concepts such as discipline, honor and respect for the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
“Combat can spin out of control and lethality and fighting can turn quickly into murder when passions run wild,” said retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
The laws of combat are designed to protect civilians as well as troops from moral injury. Soldiers will have to think about the enemy and civilians they killed “for the rest of their lives,” General Barno said, “and knowing they did it in authorized way bounded by the laws of our country and armed conflict is incredibly important.”
In Mr. Hegseth’s Senate confirmation testimony, lawmakers sought to pin him down on what he meant when he referred to the “warrior ethos” and whether he believed U.S. forces should follow the Geneva Conventions and the Uniformed Code of Military Justice even when America’s enemies ignore them.
His answers were often evasive. “An America First national security policy is not going to hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield,” Mr. Hegseth replied.
During the president’s first term, Mr. Hegseth appealed to Mr. Trump to issue pardons for U.S. troops accused or convicted of war crimes or murder for their actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In October 2019, Mr. Trump called Mr. Hegseth to tell him that he was pardoning two soldiers and a Navy SEAL whose causes Mr. Hegseth had championed for months on his Fox television show.
The president ended their conversation with a compliment that Mr. Hegseth wrote that he would “never forget and might put on his tombstone.”
The president called him a warrior, using an expletive for emphasis.
One of the pardoned soldiers was First Lt. Clint Lorance, who was turned in by his own troops after he ordered them to fire on unarmed Afghans over 100 yards away from his platoon, killing them. The soldier then radioed a false report claiming the bodies had been removed and couldn’t be searched for weapons.
The Army convicted Lieutenant Lorance of second-degree murder and other charges and sentenced him to 19 years in prison. To Mr. Hegseth, the pardon Lieutenant Lorance received represented justice. U.S. troops engaged in battle need to be “the most ruthless, the most uncompromising, the most overwhelming lethal” force on the battlefield, Mr. Hegseth wrote last year.
“Our troops will make mistakes,” he continued, “and when they do, they should get the overwhelming benefit of the doubt.”
Senior Army lawyers strongly disagreed with the decision to pardon Lieutenant Lorance, according to Pentagon officials. Among those most upset by the presidential pardon were the troops who served under him and made the difficult decision to accuse him of war crimes and testify at trial.
“I thought of the Army as this altruistic thing,” Lucas Gray who served under Lieutenant Lorance in Afghanistan told The Washington Post. “I thought it was perfect and honorable. It pains me to tell you how stupid and naive I was.”
“The Lorance stuff just broke my faith,” he said, adding: “And once you lose your values and your faith, the Army is just another job you hate.”
