Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has asked the chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Randy George, to step down and retire effective immediately.
“General Randy A. George will be retiring from his position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately,” top Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. “The Department of War is grateful for General George’s decades of service to our nation.”
The Army chief of staff position is typically a four-year term, and George was nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2023, meaning he would have served until 2027. He previously served as the senior military assistant to then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin from 2021 to 2022 during the Biden administration.
The current vice chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, will serve as acting Army chief of staff, a Pentagon official confirmed to the Washington Examiner.
Hegseth, as secretary, has now removed several senior military officers with little explanation aside from his overarching effort to reshape the military.
He previously removed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.; the Navy’s chief of naval operations in Adm. Lisa Franchetti; Adm. Linda Fagan, then the Coast Guard commandant; Gen. James Slife, the former vice chief of staff of the Air Force; and Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, who was the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
TRUMP’S TWO PATHS FOR IRAN WAR: NEGOTIATION OR ESCALATION
Hegseth also reversed the suspension of the flight crews who flew their helicopters outside of singer Kid Rock’s Nashville home. The Army had announced the suspensions and an investigation, both of which Hegseth overturned on Tuesday.
George’s removal comes a day after President Donald Trump vowed in an address to the nation to intensify strikes against Iran for up to three weeks and send the Islamic Republic “back to the stone ages where it belongs.”
