The evidence for Hegseth's tenure is rather more troubling than the rhetoric about restoring a “warrior ethos” suggests. The Department of Defense itself confirms that recruiting improved sharply in 2025: the Army exceeded its target by more than 10%, reaching its goal of 61,000 recruits four months early. But recruiting numbers do not demonstrate that the force has become more professional or strategically effective, particularly when the same period has seen an extraordinary turnover of senior leadership. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Air Force Vice Chief, senior military lawyers and numerous other senior officers were dismissed or forced out, often before completing their expected terms and with little public explanation. Whatever one's politics, replacing experienced commanders on this scale inevitably destroys institutional continuity and encourages every remaining officer to consider whether professional independence is compatible with career survival. This is pretty much what happened in Russia after 2008. In 2008, there was the Serdyukov military reform, supposedly to modernise Soviet style leadership. But Putin and Shoigu took the opportunity to politicise the military to ensure apparent loyalty not to Russia but to Putin. The result was sheer incompetence what it came to an actual shooting war. The criticism cannot simply be dismissed as coming from the political left. The Heritage Foundation's own 2026 Index of U.S. Military Strength rates the Army overall as “marginal,” with only 31 Regular Army brigade combat teams against its own benchmark of 50, or 62% of the force Heritage considers necessary for two major regional contingencies. Heritage also rates the Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard as “weak.”. It demonstrates the absurdity of claiming that dismissing experienced leaders and demanding political loyalty is some obvious cure for America's military problems. When a force already has limited capacity and major modernisation problems, purging its accumulated expertise and replacing stability with ideological uncertainty is an extremely reckless way to prepare it for a confrontation with a capable adversary such as Iran.
