Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
06-04-2026
WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has asked Army Chief of Staff Randy George to step down from his post, according to media.
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement on social media that George “will be retiring from his position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately”.
The Army chief normally serves a four-year term. George, a career military officer who graduated from the West Point military academy, was nominated for the role in 2023 by former President Joe Biden.
The latest shakeup comes after Trump said in an address to the nation that the US-Israel war with Iran is expected to conclude “very shortly”.
George served as an infantry officer in the first Gulf War and in recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was not immediately clear why he was being asked to leave.
“We are grateful for his service, but it was time for a leadership change in the Army,” an unnamed senior defence official told media.
Pentagon spokesperson Parnell said: “The Department of War is grateful for General George’s decades of service to our nation. We wish him well in his retirement.”
He will be replaced by Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen Christopher LaNeve who will become the acting army chief of staff, according to US media.
Parnell said LaNeve is “a battle-tested leader with decades of operational experience and is completely trusted by Secretary Hegseth to carry out the vision of this administration without fault”.
The US Military Academy at West Point posted photos on Wednesday of George meeting with troops, saying he “shared experience-driven guidance with cadets preparing to lead”.
Since entering the Pentagon, Hegseth has fired more than a dozen senior military officers, including the Chief of Naval Operations and the Air Force’s Vice Chief of Staff.
Of the other generals who were fired, Hodne had been head of the Army Transformation and Training Command, a unit that was only stood up in December as part of George’s effort to modernize the Army and amid Hegseth’s push to reduce the number of general officers in the military.
Green had been the Army’s chief of chaplains. Hegseth announced two major reforms to the military’s chaplain corps a little over a week ago.
In a video message last week, Hegseth said he wanted chaplains to focus more on God and less on therapeutic “self-help and self-care”. In recent years, the military has become increasingly dependent on chaplains to help address the growing numbers of troops in mental health distress. Hegseth also said chaplains would no longer wear their rank on their uniform but instead would be identified by religious insignia.
The leadership shakeup comes as Army paratroopers from the 82nd airborne division are heading to the Middle East along with thousands of Marines and other assets. The Trump administration has avoided questions about whether or not the US military will deploy ground troops against Iran.
In a prime-time address Thursday about the war, Trump offered no end date for the conflict and few details on his strategy going forward but did forecast more military action.
“We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” Trump said of Iran, before adding that “we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong”.
Hegseth echoed that sentiment after the speech, with a post on social media that simply read, “Back to the Stone Age”. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
