Washington– after Defense Minister Pete Hegseth After nine Navy officers, including all women, were removed from the list of promotions, several female officers say they take the unusual intervention as a sign that their careers now have a ceiling and worry about… The future generation of female military leaders.
The Navy selected 31 sailors for promotion from captain to one-star admiral, but Hegseth recently intervened to remove nine people from the list, including three women and two Black men, according to a defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that is not permitted to be released publicly.
As a result, the Navy did not promote a single woman to the rank of one-star admiral this year even though women make up about a quarter of all midshipmen and nearly a third of the naval service’s midlevel ranks, according to 2024 military data.
The Associated Press spoke with eight female Navy officers of varying ranks and lengths of service after Hegseth’s cuts, which were previously reported by The New York Times, became public. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from their superiors.
Younger officers said they saw the development as a sign that their careers would become politicized if they rose too far through the ranks, and some said they felt they now had a limit to how far they could advance. Some said it made them feel less valuable within the military and wondered if that was part of the intention.
The Pentagon did not provide any rationale for removing the women, or any of the other six people, from the promotion list.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said on social media this week that “military promotions are given to those who earn them,” and that the Pentagon “will never consider a soldier’s skin color or gender as a factor in promotions.” The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
The Navy’s process for selecting officers to be promoted to one-star rank has been consistent and relatively transparent over the years. The service assembles a group of officers, called a promotion board, which examines the records of qualified officers and selects the most qualified.
The board that selected the initial list of 31 officers for promotion was directed by then-Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, an appointee of President Donald Trump, to “recommend for promotion the best qualified officers within their competitive category.”
Order from Phelan who later He left his post suddenly In April, the board said it must consider an officer’s performance, competence and character, among other attributes, as part of those qualifications.
She also said that given China’s prominent position in the world The Trump Administration’s National Defense Strategy“Special attention should be paid to officers who excelled in their knowledge of military-political affairs, U.S. strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific region, and contingency operational planning for war plans in the Indo-Pacific region.”
Hegseth has long argued, Without providing evidenceThat women in the military benefit from preferential treatment and do so Not suitable for combat roles.
“For too long we have promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on so-called historical firsts.” Hegseth told hundreds of military commanders In September.
He stressed that this approach made the Pentagon “less capable and less lethal.”
Phelan’s order said the Navy cannot discriminate based on criteria such as race and sex, and specifically noted that “this directive shall not be construed to require or permit preferential treatment of any officer or group of officers on the basis of race, religion, color, or sex.”
The defense official said the full list of 31 people to be promoted was approved by Phelan, other Navy leaders and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Kean, before it reached Hegseth, who chose to make the changes.
While Hegseth has the right to weigh in on the list, “that’s not the norm,” said Katherine Kosminski, a researcher specializing in military recruitment and retention at the Center for the New American Security think tank.
“This decision was not made by the US Navy — it was made by the Secretary of Defense,” Kosminski noted, and said Hegseth’s increasing interference in operational aspects of the military services such as promotions creates “tension” about what “normal” will look like in the future.
Some senior Navy officers who spoke with the AP expressed concerns about the message it sends to the next generation of young sailors.
In addition to withdrawing the recent promotions of three women to the rank of admiral, Hegseth shortly after taking office Admiral Lisa Franchitti dismissedthe chief service officer and the first woman to hold that position. He never explained his justifications.
Since then, he had also dismissed two other three-star admirals without explanation.
Some officers who spoke to the AP said that while they were encouraging sailors to stay in the Navy, they acknowledged the message comes at a difficult time.
Kosminski said the rhetoric and actions surrounding women in the military “influence decision-making among individual service members, and they also influence decision-making in the family unit,” including whether or not people will serve in the military.
Kosminski said this months later Continue military promotions By Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, During the Biden administrationSurveys have shown that partisan politics spill over into the daily lives of troops influencing decision-making.
One officer said that this influence is not limited to women.
In conversations with other Sailors in her unit, she said male Sailors were reluctant to deal with what appeared to be increasing politicization of simply following orders from previous administrations.