Hegseth Orders Sweeping Overhaul of Military Education at War Colleges

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a sweeping overhaul of United States military education on Monday, using a speech at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, to unveil 33 directives for the senior service colleges that train the armed forces' future commanders.

The changes take aim at how senior officers are taught and graded. Hegseth ordered the elimination of the capstone thesis at the war colleges. In its place, graduates will be judged on an AI assisted capstone wargame and on high stress scenarios that force decisions under pressure. He praised the Naval War College for running two such wargames this year and ordered a permanent inter college wargaming structure across all senior service colleges.

Classified study and new grading rules

Hegseth ordered faster spending to build and expand secure rooms for classified work, known as SCIFs, at every war college campus. Students, he said, cannot study real threats on unclassified networks. "You cannot study real-world pacing threats using open-source journalism," he said. "You cannot conduct realistic wargaming against an adversary's operational plans on unclassified networks."

Grading will change from the next academic year. Most of a student's final grade will come from individually assessed practical work, formal writing assignments and examinations. Seminar participation will count for less.

Each senior college will also create what the plan calls warfighter chair posts, filled by high performing lieutenant colonels and colonels, grades O-5 and O-6, fresh from operational duty. The service secretaries have 120 days to report on a review of the colleges' boards of visitors, including an audit of current members. Colleges have 90 days to report how they will build formal case studies of recent operational and ethical successes and failures into their courses.

Faculty, tenure and accreditation

For newly hired civilian faculty, the plan ends lifetime tenure and emeritus status and shifts to three year contracts based on performance, judged on teaching and national security research. Hegseth said civilian accreditation bodies would not dictate the standards, governance or curriculum of the war colleges.

In his memo to senior Pentagon leaders, Hegseth wrote that the fundamental purpose of the armed forces is to fight and win the nation's wars, and that academic drift at the senior colleges had traded combat readiness for theory. A military education review launched in March has not yet released its full results.

A warning to the college itself

Hegseth aimed some of his sharpest words at the school hosting him. He said the review had found what he called a stubborn undercurrent of passive aggressive institutional resistance at the Naval War College, and he accused unnamed critics of hiding behind tenure and accreditation to wait out President Donald Trump's term. He named no names and took no questions.

He also said war colleges should study former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley and the dispute over his actions during the 2020 presidential transition, which Hegseth called a major civil military crisis. He noted that he ended a longstanding partnership between Brown University and the War College last month.

The announcement landed on a difficult day for Hegseth in Washington. Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, introduced articles of impeachment against him in the House on Monday over his handling of the war with Iran. The House must take up the measure within two legislative days.