In remarks at U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth touted the reforms he's set into motion at the Pentagon.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00100 days fighting for you is the privilege of a lifetime a deployment of a lifetime and from day
00:07one and each 100 of those days our overriding objectives have been clear restoring the warrior
00:16ethos rebuilding our military and re-establishing deterrence restoring the warrior ethos is one of
00:25the most fundamental of those three everything starts and ends with warriors in training and
00:33on the battlefield we are leaving wokeness and weakness behind and refocusing on lethality
00:41meritocracy accountability standards and rep one of the early actions we did was to commission
00:50and review of military standards training standards physical standards gender neutral
01:00standards for combat roles to be the world's most lethal and effective fighting force you have to
01:07set and maintain high standards for our men and women in uniform high equal and unwavering
01:15to be lethal you have to trust that the warrior alongside you in battle or the troops fighting
01:23in the unit that many of you will lead are capable truly physically capable of doing what is necessary
01:30under fire they need to be fit not fat sharp not shabby especially our leaders and that's why we're
01:43reviewing how the department has maintained standards in the past past four years and whether those
01:50standards have dropped formally or informally we're also welcoming back former service members who were
01:59wrongly forced to leave the military more than 8 700 service members were involuntarily separated
02:07for not taking an experimental covid 19 vaccine others were more informally pushed out or decided to get out we are welcoming actively back those warriors of conscience
02:21we've sent letters out we're seeking them out we want them back they never should have been forced to come back quickly
02:29our personnel and readiness department is working in real time to make that process more and more efficient more and more direct
02:36every single day and as we welcome those warriors back we're giving we've said goodbye to the harmful effects culture and
02:47all the inclusion programs we're eye content content eliminating quotas
02:59and promotions are based on performance not immutable characteristics de
03:06ee at dod based called individual initiative excellence in hard work we're also working hard to protect command climate
03:24we're going to be reviewing ig and eo processes that too often are weaponized against commanders in formations
03:33i can't tell you how many men and women i hear from about to take battalion or brigade leadership or wing
03:40leadership you name it uh who feel like they're walking big shells because of we're put in place that
03:47undermine a commander's ability to lead we are reviewing that all we're also optimizing the civilian workforce
03:55ensuring that we have the right employees in the right roles at the right time to support our warfighters
04:00we're doing this by volunteer possible through offering flight voluntary
04:10initiatives we're doing this by volunteer
04:14possible through offering like voluntary
04:19initiatives so low productivity telework and remote work culture teams work best when they work together
04:29in person butts in seats not on zoom we're making accountability and high performance the watch words for the department
04:38at all levels levels we expect employees to deliver results and respond to leadership needs
04:45their incentives and their performance plans we believe quickly and in real time will reflect that
04:52it's a lot of change very quickly now as you may have noticed the media likes to call it chaos
05:02we call it overdue
05:05how are the men and women responding to this to this call well i can tell you personally it's going
05:11how are the men and women responding to this call well i can tell you something better than we could have ever
05:13better than we could have ever