Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, to step down from the post and retire immediately, a Pentagon official told The Hill on Thursday.
The Army did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
The Pentagon confirmed George’s retirement, who served as the Army’s 41st chief of staff.
“The Department of War is grateful for General George’s decades of service to our nation. We wish him well in his retirement,” Pentagon chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a statement.
The Army’s current vice chief of staff is Lt. Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who was previously Hegseth’s military aide, will serve as the acting chief of staff, a Pentagon official told The Hill.
“General LaNeve — a generational leader — will help ensure the Army revives the warrior ethos, rebuilds for the modern battlefield and deters our enemies around the world,” Hegseth said of LaNeve in January.
George assumed the role, which is typically a four-year post, in September 2023 after being confirmed by the Senate; he had been serving as the Army’s vice chief of staff. George, a career infantry officer who graduated from West Point, was nominated by former President Biden.
Since taking the helm at the Pentagon, Hegseth has fired more than a dozen senior military officers, including the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse and Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti.
The ouster of George marks another example of tension between the Pentagon head and the Army’s leadership. Hegseth ordered Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to remove one of his top advisers, Col. David Butler, who was Gen. Mark Milley’s spokesperson when he was chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in February.
The purge of defense officials continued on Thursday as Hegseth removed Maj. Gen. William Green, the Army’s Chief of Chaplains, and Gen. David Hodne, who headed the Army’s Transformation and Training Command since last year, a Pentagon official and another U.S. official familiar with the matter told The Hill late Thursday.
Last week, the Defense secretary ordered that chaplains will no longer wear their rank insignia, but rather show insignia that reflects their religious affiliation. He said in a memo that chaplains will keep their rank as officers, but it would not be shown as this “speaks to the difficult balance of the duality” of the position.
The Army’s Transformation and Training Command kicked off in early October last year and was formed to “unify force generation, force development and force design” with three subordinate three-star commands.
On Tuesday, Hegseth said the Army crew that flew two AH‑64 Apache helicopters near Kid Rock’s Nashville home will not face suspension and ended the investigation into the service members. Earlier that day, the crew members were suspended by the Army and the service opened an investigation into the incident.
George’s ouster was reported earlier by CBS News.
George was commissioned from the U.S. Military Academy as an infantry officer in 1988 and deployed in support of Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
George was the Army’s chief of staff from 2022 to 2023.
Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), praised George as a “Patriot” and argued his ouster will be a “huge loss for our Army & our country.”
“Hegseth and Trump firing the highest ranking Army officer, in the middle of a war they started, shows you exactly where their priorities are,” Ryan said Thursday on the social platform X.
Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), who is also on HASC, when asked on Newsmax about George’s ouster, said “I’d be very curious to hear why. I mean, General George is a brilliant mind.”
“I’ve never heard him say anything contrary to what the president is trying to achieve” McCormick said on Thursday.
Updated at 9:10 p.m. EDT
