Pentagon upheaval risks military readiness as US wages Gulf war

The United States military is caught in a vise. On one side, President Trump is locked in a grinding confrontation with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz—a conflict that has already consumed vast quantities of ammunition, stretched deployments across the globe, and pulled resources from every other theater where America maintains a presence. On the other side, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is dismantling the Pentagon's leadership structure with a speed and scope that has alarmed even Trump's own party.

Last Monday, Dan Driscoll resigned as Secretary of the Army. He was not a public figure, and his name would mean little to most Americans. But his departure mattered deeply because it represented the latest casualty in what amounts to a purge of the military's senior ranks. Driscoll had spent months pushing for rapid modernization of the Army—adding drones to frontline units, adapting to lessons from Ukraine about how warfare had fundamentally changed. He clashed repeatedly with Hegseth over the pace and scope of these changes. When Driscoll raised concerns within the administration that Hegseth was blocking modernization efforts by firing the generals responsible for them, his time was finished.

Hegseth has now removed or sidelined the top uniformed officers in charge of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, along with at least two dozen generals, admirals, and civilian defense officials—many of them among the most decorated in the military. In public, Hegseth has framed this as cultural reform: ending what he calls "woke" initiatives, scrapping rules of engagement he believes constrain lethality, dismantling diversity programs. He has railed against "fat generals" and promised to revive what he calls the warrior spirit. But the scale and speed of the removals have triggered alarm even among Republicans. Senator Thom Tillis, a frequent Trump critic, called for Hegseth to be fired, saying he had "never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country." H.R. McMaster, Trump's National Security Adviser during his first term, warned that Driscoll's departure was "not good news" for the nation and the Army, noting that Driscoll had been driving a modernization agenda the military desperately needed.

Retired Navy Captain Jon Duffy, who spent 30 years in uniform and later served as a White House defense policy official, described what has happened as a hollowing out of military leadership at precisely the wrong moment. "You lose the Army secretary, the chief of staff and other senior leaders driving modernization, it creates a lot of uncertainty and it disrupts momentum," he said. That uncertainty ripples downward through the entire force, undermining the coherence and effectiveness of the institution itself. Michael Schiffer, a former top Pentagon official who worked on East Asia policy during the Obama administration, drew a stark comparison: the removals resembled President Xi Jinping's political purges of the Chinese military, which are widely understood to have created serious deficiencies in command structure and readiness. "We've been conducting a military purge as well, and that has real effects on the ability of our military to be able to discharge its responsibilities," Schiffer told the BBC.

Meanwhile, the war with Iran is bleeding the military dry. On February 28, Trump ordered strikes on Iranian targets. Over the following months, the campaign consumed resources at a staggering rate. The United States fired roughly one-third of its entire stockpile of 3,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Air defense munitions were burned through even faster—nearly 1,500 Patriot interceptors out of a total stockpile of around 2,300. Carrier strike groups were diverted from the Pacific to the Gulf, including the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS George Washington, which is based in Japan. Thousands of troops, including the 82nd Airborne Division, were deployed to the Middle East more than six months ago for what was supposed to be a temporary deployment but is now stretching into 2027 with no clear endpoint.

The consequences are already visible across America's global military posture. Europe is experiencing what experts call significant blowback. Trump announced a cut of 5,000 troops from the 40,000 based in Germany, and scrapped a Biden-era plan to deploy a battalion equipped with long-range Tomahawk missiles to the country. The Trump administration did not consult with NATO allies before launching the Iran strikes, leaving relations damaged at a moment when Russia is escalating what it calls hybrid attacks—armed drone strikes and sabotage operations against NATO countries like Germany. Professor Liana Fix, a Germany-based expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Putin is reading these signals as evidence of weakness and division between the United States and Europe. "He sees that they are weakening, that there are windows and openings of vulnerabilities in Europe," she said.

The Pacific has not fared better. While the Trump administration's strategic priority is managing rivalry with China, carrier forces have been pulled from that region to support operations in the Gulf. The White House insists that American military strength is undiminished and that stockpiles are more than sufficient for all strategic needs. But the arithmetic tells a different story: a military leadership in turmoil, ammunition stocks depleted, forces stretched across multiple theaters with no reserves, and alliances fraying from lack of communication and visible commitment. The question now is whether the Pentagon can sustain this posture while simultaneously conducting the internal upheaval Hegseth has set in motion.