WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his senior staff had been discussing for months the unusual meeting they have planned for next week that hundreds of senior officers will be required to attend, officials familiar with the planning said. But the plans and timing were only finalized in recent days, leaving top generals and admirals scrambling to find aircraft and make other last-minute plans to attend.
The meeting is considered highly unusual for its size and timing, and for the fact that Hegseth has ordered his entire senior officer corps to Washington on short notice and without telling them the meeting’s purpose, and it has raised alarms within the military and on Capitol Hill as a result.
The brief messages senior officers received about the meeting in recent days were short on information, especially for a military that likes to plan deliberately, said one officer who received the notice.
“There were no details in there, no amplifying information,” the officer said.
The mysterious meeting’s actual purpose is an opportunity for Hegseth to highlight what he sees as Pentagon accomplishments under his leadership and then discuss the way forward for the U.S. military, according to one official who knew of the plans.
One topic Hegseth will discuss is the coming National Defense Strategy, which will prioritize homeland defense over threats from China, Russia, Iran and terror groups, the official said.
Such announcements would normally be made in a smaller group, via memo or directive, or even on a video teleconference limited to senior military leaders, from whom the information would go out down the chain of command.
Gathering all the military brass together in this meeting, though, will allow Hegseth and his social media team to capture video and photos of him with hundreds of generals and admirals listening to him at once, a potentially powerful visual, the official said.
Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, sent a statement confirming that Hegseth will be meeting with senior officers next week, but did not elaborate.
“The Secretary of War will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week,” Parnell said.
The Washington Post first reported the plans for the meeting.
Defense secretaries routinely meet with senior officers, sometimes as many as two or three dozen at a time, who travel from around the world to the Pentagon. What is notable about this meeting is that it could involve as many as 800 officers, from one-star generals and admirals to four-star officers, all coming at one time.
Some of those senior officers would also likely travel with at least one aide as well as their communications personnel, who are responsible for securing the senior officers’ communications with their commands. Some will also have their own security. Those additional personnel, all typically seen as critical, could easily quadruple to more than 3,000 the number of military members having to come to Washington on short notice.
Hegseth’s demand to have so many officers attend the summit, to be held at Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, about 30 miles south of Washington, D.C., will raise questions about cost and logistics. Some officials also wonder about the wisdom of pulling hundreds of top officers from their commands at the same time and bringing them to one central location as problems fester around the world.
Security at Quantico, especially on short notice, poses an enormous challenge, said one of the officials.
“Just getting through the gate will be hilarious,” said the officer who received the notice.
The reality of having such a meeting on such short notice means plans will very likely need to be revised over the next few days, said the officer, speculating that the logistics and security requirements would dictate some changes.
“They will come back with more and more details and it will be scaled down, I presume,” the officer said.
Others in the military also worry that U.S. adversaries could take advantage of the fact that so many commanders will essentially be out of pocket for that long a time, said one person familiar with the planning.
Hegseth has touted his efforts to restore a “warrior ethos” to the military by dispensing with programs like those that champion diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, in favor of those that he says promote “lethality.”
Hegseth has also removed several senior officers in recent months, notably including some prominent female and Black officers, without explanation. That has raised worries among the officer corps that in addition to normal topics, next week’s meeting could result in some sudden, new removals. There are current plans to cut as many as 20% of the U.S. military’s senior officers, but it has not been clear when that would happen.
The meeting comes as a government shutdown looms, potentially happening the day after the meeting. That could complicate attendees’ travel home.
President Donald Trump on Thursday brushed off any concerns about the meeting.
“I know, I love it, I mean I think it’s great,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“Let him be friendly with the generals and admirals from all over the world,” he said of Hegseth. “You act like this is a bad thing. Isn’t it nice that people are coming from all over the world to be with us?”
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