Fresh on the heels of the abrupt defenestration of Army Chief of Staff Randy George (see Pete Hegseth Gives the Army Chief of Staff His Walking Papers – RedState), Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has forced two more general officers into unplanned retirements. The newly departed are General David Hodne, who leads the Army’s Transformation and Training Command (T2COM), and Major General William Green Jr., the Army’s chief of chaplains.
No solid reasons have been offered for either dismissal, though we can speculate.
Hodne assumed command of the newly formed T2COM in October 2025. This command was a creation of Pete Hegseth's signature Army Transformation and Acquisition Reform; see Hegseth Eliminates Generals and Scraps Obsolescent Weapons to Jump Start the 21st Century Army – RedState. T2COM is an amalgam of the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command and Army Futures Command. Hodne was promoted to 4-star rank in January 2024. This action indicates that Hodne was not the right man for the job of merging two major Army commands, jumpstarting the sclerotic acquisition system, and killing off old programs to make way for innovative ones.
The firing of Army Chief of Chaplains Green is a bit more interesting. One of the major projects under Hegseth's stewardship of the War Department has been restoring to active duty all members of the Armed Forces who were forced out for not taking the COVID vaccine, who request restoration, and are otherwise eligible. Were I placing a bet, this is what I'd bet on. There is another possibility as well. Last week, Hegseth announced that military chaplains would no longer wear military rank and that officially recognized religions and religious denominations were reduced from about 220 to about 31 (the numbers on both ends of the spectrum vary by source).
Unlike George, neither Hodne nor Green has the stench of former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's patronage hanging over them, which leads me to believe the timing is serendipitous and the reasons very different.
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