As the US-Iran conflict risked reigniting in latest weeks, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boarded a Navy ship for what was supposed to be a routine go to with sailors.
The journey was marred by facial hair: Hegseth observed a number of sailors sporting beards, apparently violating a stricter policy proscribing beards in most cases that he issued final 12 months, in accordance to a protection official and emails seen by NCS referencing the protection secretary’s requests for action to be taken.
Hegseth left the ship questioning if the Pentagon rank-and-file paid consideration to his beard policy and different policy modifications he has made to the workforce.
Shortly after the go to in June, Pentagon officers held a sequence of conferences through which they advised subordinates that Hegseth was intently monitoring companies’ progress on the beard policy and different office modifications, and that there was stress from political appointees to transfer sooner on the directives.
“Want to bring to your attention that the SecWar is paying close attention to the progress of the EEO [Equal Employment Opportunity] reforms,” a Pentagon official centered on civilian personnel policy emailed colleagues in June. “In fact, the push is to move faster … there is a need to revamp some of our timelines.”
The episode exhibits how Hegseth intensely focuses on personnel insurance policies, together with these with tradition conflict undertones, even because the US army conducts operations from Iran to the Caribbean. The 46-year-old Iraq conflict veteran has additionally introduced Christian prayer companies to the Pentagon and threatened to cut ties with Scouting America over its “woke” insurance policies.
NCS couldn’t decide which ship go to prompted Hegseth’s crackdown. He visited the USS Carl Vinson in San Diego in June and the USS Boxer in Singapore in May, in accordance to the Pentagon.
Asked for remark, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell stated in an announcement: Hegseth “maintains the highest expectations for our service members to uphold the professional standards of appearance, fitness, and discipline that define our warfighting force, and he continues to emphasize consistent enforcement of hair, weight, and grooming standards across all ranks.”
Commanders “will be held accountable for delivering results as the Department works to restore a culture of excellence and readiness,” Parnell stated.
The modifications that Hegseth made to Pentagon EEO insurance policies embrace necessities that office complaints be handled in a well timed method and that the topic of a criticism be presumed harmless except proof confirmed in any other case. A questionnaire despatched not too long ago to Pentagon workers asks them in regards to the variety of dismissed office complaints.
Those EEO reforms are a welcome effort to enhance a course of that has lengthy been stricken by delays, in accordance to Katherine Kuzminski, a scholar on the Center for a New American Security suppose tank.
“For those filing a substantiated complaint, long timelines delay appropriate intervention; those who have an unsubstantiated claim filed against them have a cloud of suspicion hanging over them until the process is complete,” Kuzminski advised NCS.
Facial hair has been a extra seen measure of how Hegseth is reshaping the army.
In September, he issued a memo that tightened restrictions on beards and the granting of medical-based exemptions to develop them, reversing years of policy. “No more beardos,” Hegseth stated in a speech to tons of of high army officers. “The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.”
The army had in recent times progressively grow to be extra accommodating of beards, granting hundreds of medical and non secular exemptions. But Hegseth’s memo argued that beards have been a nationwide safety concern as a result of they may stop service members from safely donning protecting tools in response to chemical or organic threats. (The Army has finished extensive studies of the results of beards on gasoline masks and permitted exemptions prior to now.)
Critics of the policy say it fails to adequately account for a painful medical situation that disproportionately impacts Black males. Pseudofolliculitis barbae, or PFB, happens when shaved hair curls again into the pores and skin. Under the brand new policy, commanders can kick out army personnel who require a shaving waiver after a 12 months of medical therapy for PFB.
That policy “allows for an environment of hostility to our Black troops in uniform in part because it opens them up to greater harassment from their senior enlisted,” stated Richard Brookshire, co-founder of the nonprofit Black Veterans Project. “It opens them up for … disciplinary action for a treatable condition that the military had been adequately treating for well over a decade.”
“You’re talking about getting rid of well-qualified, patriotic, lethal soldiers at a time our country is propagating new and complex wars, after spending quite literally millions of dollars to train these men and women,” Brookshire advised NCS.
Hegseth’s modifications to grooming and personnel requirements coincided with a speech he gave in September earlier than hundreds of the nation’s senior officers and enlisted leaders that he summoned to a army set up in Quantico, Virginia. Hegseth hammered residence the necessity for change on issues like bodily health and stricter grooming requirements — points that sometimes fall to extra junior leaders to implement. The concern of threats to the homeland and deterring China, he stated on the time, was “another speech for another day.”
The day earlier than the US and Israel started their conflict with Iran in February, Hegseth released a video on social media in regards to the Scouting America (previously Boy Scouts of America) and his “deep concerns” about variety, fairness and inclusion efforts inside the group. The identical day, he signed a memorandum discontinuing participation by army officers in choose fellowships and at elite universities like Yale, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, accusing the colleges of propagating “leftist ideology.”
NCS’s Haley Britzky contributed reporting.