Personnel Removals in Navy Promotion List Under Defense Secretary Hegseth

Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary , just pulled nine Navy officers off the promotion list for one-star admiral. It’s a move that’s immediately drawn under a huge spotlight. Why? Because it hits women and minority officers particularly hard.

Five defense folks, current and former, spoke to the Times about it. They dropped three women, two Black men, and four white men from that list after Hegseth stepped in. They spoke anonymously, naturally, because these are sensitive personnel moves.

The resulting slate of twenty-two nominees for one-star admiral, which they released publicly in late May, looks completely different from what the Navy actually has in terms of personnel. Zero women made the cut. That’s wild. Women make up about twenty-one percent of the active-duty Navy.

And the racial split is equally strange. Only two nonwhite officers were on that list. But you know the numbers. Racial minorities make up nearly thirty-eight percent of the sailors right now.

These officials called the removals highly unusual. Under Pentagon rules, a secretary usually only removes someone if there are serious moral, mental, physical, or professional concerns about their leadership suitability. Not this.

Critics are pointing to a pattern. This isn't just an isolated incident. It feels like part of a wider push under Hegseth to roll back diversity initiatives, more than just focusing on actual performance issues. Lawmakers and officials are warning that this kind of action will seriously shape who ends up in top military leadership down the line.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesman, just shut down any specific explanation.

“Military promotions are given to those who have earned them,” Parnell said. “The department will never consider the colour of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor in promotions.”

The Navy, meanwhile, didn’t weigh in. Silence.

Hegseth has been busy since taking office. He’s removed or sidelined nearly three dozen senior military officers as part of this larger effort to reshape the Pentagon leadership. He’s been publicly calling some leaders “foolish,” “reckless,” and “woke.” But he hasn't bothered explaining the reasoning behind individual dismissals or promotion interventions. It just keeps creating a vacuum.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, weighed in recently. He said the removals are hollowing out the best, most experienced officers. He argued it makes young officers wonder if they should even want to serve.

He pointed out that nearly sixty percent of the senior officers Hegseth removed were women or Black officers. That’s despite women and minorities making up less than twenty percent of the generals and admirals we see today.

The process for promotion to one-star rank is already intense. You have boards of admirals or generals reviewing hundreds of records over weeks. Only about five percent get selected.

When the lists are reviewed, service secretaries and the Defense Secretary look at them. Pentagon rules say you can only remove names if there’s some specific evidence about an officer’s qualifications. But the secrecy around Hegseth’s moves makes that process feel totally opaque.

This lack of transparency has just annoyed lawmakers on both sides.

Representative Austin Scott, a Republican, asked a question during a hearing about whether officers had been removed from an Army list. He wasn't focused on race or gender, he asked about the action itself. He asked the Army chief of staff if Hegseth had pulled names.

The Army chief of staff, General LaNeve, deflected. He said the question should be directed straight to Hegseth.

When Hegseth eventually appeared before the House Armed Services Committee, he acknowledged removing names from the Army list. But he refused to talk about specifics. He just said they didn’t discuss those cases out of respect for the officers.

But the real friction point seems to be the underlying motive. Some of the officers removed from the Navy list might have been targeted because of past involvement in diversity programs.

One case stands out. An officer whose promotion was blocked had served as a surface warfare officer, completed advanced nuclear power training, and worked as a senior aide to a four-star admiral. Yet, she was targeted after her name showed up on a website claiming to identify “woke” military officers. That website highlighted her role as a diversity liaison officer about twenty years ago—helping recruit and keep women and minorities in the service.

Another female officer removed was a Navy pilot and a foreign area officer. A third one led a major Navy medical command.

It’s complicated. Before Hegseth took over, he had opposed women serving in combat roles. He softened that stance later, saying women could serve if they met the same physical standards. But now, critics argue his recent actions just bring those old concerns back into sharp focus regarding women in senior leadership.

Retired Air Force lieutenant colonel Jessica Ruttenber, who flew tankers in Iraq and Afghanistan, was struck by the absence of women on the Navy’s promotion list when it came out in May. She wasn't aware of the removals at the time.

She wrote something online about it. She felt like the military she left in 2021 feels totally different from what we’re seeing now. She said it feels like hard-won progress is moving backward in real time. That’s the part she can’t shake. She wondered: Would she want her own kids to enter a system like this?