Retired Major General James Spider Marks slammed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for trying to "flex his muscles" by announcing he's slashing top generals and admirals from the Pentagon.
CNN's John Berman played a clip of Hegseth claiming his new "DOD reforms" will include "less generals, more G.I.s."
"'Fewer generals,' he should have said," Berman quipped. "He says it's not 'slash and burn,' Spider. But what do you think when you look at this?"
"I don't see the correlation between reducing the size of the general officer ranks, flag officer ranks, and increasing the size of the enlisted population," Marks said. "These are two different sources, two different buckets of individuals and leadership capacities."
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Marks continued that if Hegseth's objective is purely to cut costs, "this would be a drop in the bucket."
"What I would recommend...turn around to the services and say, 'Service chiefs, I think we've got a challenge here. I want your recommendations on what what you should look like. Come back to me with your recommendations.' Don't state up front, 'We've got a 20% reduction in four stars,' which would be about 8 to 10 personnel. And don't say, 'We're going to have an additional 10% across the board in all the other flags,' which would be about an 80 to 90 number of individuals reduced. Come back and say, 'Look, here's what we can do to solve this particular problem.' Then, if you do that, the service chiefs own the solution. I mean, they're going to be all in."
Marks claimed Hegseth's big misstep was making a declaration from on high.
"If it's coming from the top, it seems...non-serious is what it seems to me. And there's not...a lot of real substance to what he's trying to achieve. I think he's flexing his muscles. We don't need to be reminded that he's the Secdef. I got it — you're in charge. This is not the way you embrace the organization."