[Salon] This week in The Bunker: President Trump roils the Pentagon by purging generals

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February 26, 2025

Washington, DC

This week in The Bunker: President Trump roils the Pentagon by purging generals for gaseous reasons; a new Navy shipbuilder wants to build a fleet filled with ghost sailors; another startup rachets up rhetoric as it assumes command of a major Army program; and more.

THE CAINE MUTINY LOYALTY

Shake, rattle and rolling the Pentagon

Donald Trump eliminated Air Force General Charles “CQ” Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on February 21, just like he eliminated Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani in 2020 — with a night-time surprise attack that removed both from power. Sure, while neither strike conformed to custom, both were legal (PDF) (though the Soleimani strike raised questions) — and Brown, unlike Soleimani, survived his. Trump took the radical step of pulling a little-known retired three-star Air Force officer, Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine, back onto active duty to replace Brown (pending Senate approval).

The Pentagon has been running on automatic pilot since the end of the Cold War. So don’t look to The Bunker to grouse over the fact that Trump unceremoniously dumped Brown, the president’s senior military adviser. Sure, change is needed. But neither Caine nor Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has the skills and smarts to remake the 1.3-million-member U.S. military (neither did Brown, for that matter).

Trump and Hegseth cashiered Brown, the second Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs, supposedly because of his support for diversifying the ranks of the U.S. military. That says more about Trump and Hegseth than it does about Brown. This swapping of one F-16 fighter pilot for another says less about accountability than it does about bigotry. And such contemptable choices rot good order and discipline in the ranks.

Brown wasn’t the Friday Night Massacre’s only casualty. Trump also fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve as chief of naval operations, and Air Force General James Slife, the service’s #2 officer. Both were implicated in diversity — critics suggested Franchetti was tapped to serve as the Navy’s top officer because of her gender, and Slife once said the Air Force was affected by “institutional racism.” Canning Brown and Franchetti sent 25% of the eight-memberJoint Chiefs of Staff packing — more than double the 10% that was the Roman army’s definition of decimation. Neither Trump nor Hegseth cited any reasons for the firings, nor did they provide specific reasons for their booting of the top uniformed lawyers of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and Hegseth’s senior military assistant, Lieutenant General Jennifer Short.

Trump has made clear why he likes Caine. The general was serving in Iraq in 2018, during Trump’s first term, when they first met. According to Trump, Caine told him during that get-together that the U.S. military could destroy the Islamic State caliphate far more quickly than Pentagon officials were saying. Then, according to Trump, Caine made three statements that endeared him to the president: “I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir.”

It’s hard to believe Caine said anything so stupid. But even if he did, it’s stunning that a president would repeat it. After all, until last weekend, U.S. military officers’ oath of officewas enough to safely cover only the last of those three declarations.

ROBOFLEET

A marine startup calls for a new kind of Navy

Robot shipbuilder Saronic is looking to retool the U.S. Navy with a fleet of uncrewed warships. It’s going to be a challenge. The Navy has always been leery of change. It stuck with sails over steam for far too long. But U.S. Navy shipbuilding is now in such disrepair — delays and overruns are the rule, not the exception — that Saronic just may get a chance to show what it can do.

The Texas-based contractor has raised $600 million in venture capital and is looking to build its “Project Alpha” shipyard somewhere (no location has yet been picked) soon (no date has yet been picked). Nonetheless, the three-year-old startup has big dreams. “We’re going to invest billions of dollars into the defense industrial race and bring shipbuilding back to this country again in a way that we have not seen since World War II,” Saronic CEO Dino Mavrookas said February 18.

The goal isn’t to replicate today’s huge bespoke Navy vessels minus their crews, but to build more, smaller, simpler autonomous vessels that can be churned out much more quickly. These uncrewed boats would then merge into a hybrid fleet capable of covering more square miles of sea without always putting U.S. sailors in harm’s way.

Personnelly speaking, rough seas lie ahead. Current shipyards are plagued with a lack of workers that has slowed down production. “We are eyes wide open on the types of capabilities we need from a personnel standpoint, but also hardware,” Saronic’s Rob Lehman said. “We’re looking at a new class of vessels with a new way of building them … unburdened by what some of the constraints the current shipbuilding industrial base are hindered by.”

Such programs always sound like the cat’s meow when they’re just getting started. But, unlike many, this notion has an edge because it’s seeking to leapfrog decrepit U.S. warship builders — like shooting warships in a barrel.

MIND-GOGGLING

Small company takes over Microsoft’s Army program

If uncrewed warships are a “man bites dog” story, here’s another: A small defense startup has taken over the Army’s $22 billion high-tech goggles program from Microsoft, the 13th largest company on the Fortune 500. Eight-year-old Anduril is now in charge of the Army’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System, a collection of soldier-carried hardware (PDF) designed to deliver war-fighting data directly into the helmet-and-headset-wearing eyeballs of 21st Century GI Joes and Janes.

It’s about time. Microsoft’s management of the program has been plagued by developmental woes, including dizziness, headaches and nausea among soldiers testing the $80,000 super goggles. IVAS signals “the beginnings of a new path in human augmentation, one that will allow America’s warfighters to surpass the limitations of human form and cognition, seamlessly teaming enhanced humans with large packs of robotic and biologic teammates,” Anduril founder Palmer Luckey said in a blog post. It’s amazing how defense startups echo the buzzwordian dreams of their bigger and older competitors.

It’s too bad that today’s marketing hype invariably falls short of tomorrow’s battlefield reality.