War Secretary Pete Hegseth has reportedly issued a highly unusual order directing hundreds of the U.S. military’s generals and admirals to assemble next week at a Marine Corps base in Virginia — on short notice and without explanation — a move that shocked military leaders.
The directive, sent earlier this week, requires virtually all top commanders worldwide — those holding the rank of brigadier general or higher, or their Navy equivalent, along with their senior enlisted advisers — to attend the meeting at Marine Corps Base Quantico next Tuesday, The Washington Post reported Thursday in an exclusive.
Even commanders in conflict zones and those stationed in Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region are expected to attend. The order does not apply to officers in staff roles.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed that Hegseth “will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week” but declined to provide further details, according to the report.
No one interviewed by The Post could recall a defense secretary ever summoning such a large number of top officers in this way.
“People are very concerned,” a source told the Post. “They have no idea what it means.”
The call for general and flag officers (GOFOs) to meet is as unprecedented as it is alarming, another source told the Post.
“You don’t call GOFOs leading their people and the global force into an auditorium outside D.C. and not tell them why,” the source said.
A new national defense strategy is also in the works, expected to prioritize homeland defense over competition with China – and some officials believe this shift could be a focus of next week’s closed-door meeting, according to the Post.
“Are we taking every general and flag officer out of the Pacific right now?” a U.S. official told the Post. “All of it is weird.”
This week, President Donald Trump urged NATO to take a more assertive role in Ukraine’s defense by using weapons to push back Russian advances directly on the front lines. He suggested that the U.S. would provide arms to NATO members — who would then deploy them to Ukraine — rather than shipping them directly from U.S. stockpiles.
This shift marks a departure from his prior posture of limited direct intervention, and reflects a broader recalibration of U.S. involvement in the war.
Trump’s statements in a meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy came one day after newly appointed U.S. ambassador to NATO Mike Waltz vowed at his first U.N. Security Council meeting this week that the U.S. is resolute in helping defend “every inch” of NATO territory.
