Hegseth Announces 33 Military College Reform Directives at Naval War College: 80-Page Theses Out, Wargaming In
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delivered remarks at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, on November 9, addressing the college's students and faculty on professional military education reform. He opened by noting that a Rhode Island state trooper escorting his convoy had been in an accident on the way in, was stable in hospital, and thanked law enforcement and service members whose routine-looking duties are anything but routine.
Hegseth said the fundamental duty of the United States armed forces is to assure America's victory in war, and that the only screening criterion for the senior service colleges should be whether what is taught will help the United States win, rather than the passive transmission of credentials. A true mission statement for a war college, he said, should be blunt: to educate senior military officers so they can defeat America's adversaries. He noted that the words win and defeat are largely absent from the colleges' current mission statements.
He said the United States is in the most far-reaching strategic recalibration since the end of the Second World War: under the 2026 National Defense Strategy and the America First paradigm, the country is redefining its relationship with Europe and demanding genuine burden sharing, has revitalized the Monroe Doctrine in its own hemisphere, has helped seal the southwest border, and has oriented national power toward the Pacific. He criticized the senior service colleges as intellectually trapped in an earlier paradigm and said military education has become dangerously civilianized over the past two decades. He said a long-standing partnership memorandum between the Naval War College and Brown University had been ended last month at his direction.
Hegseth announced 33 new directives, a complete overhaul to reform the Department of War's senior service colleges, with the memo and directives arriving at the colleges the same day. Effective immediately, he said, there will be no more 80-page theoretical written theses as the primary capstone of war college achievement; in their place, competitive super intelligence (SI)-assisted wargaming and high-stress decision-forcing scenarios will be the centerpiece of senior officer evaluation, and he credited the Naval War College with already running two such war games this year. The department will create a permanent inter-college wargaming architecture, feed the games into newly established joint warfighter exercises and evaluations, and use rigorous adversarial oral defense boards that eliminate the ability to hide behind academic ghost writers or generative super intelligence (SI).
On facilities, he said the department is accelerating capital investment to build, modernize and expand sensitive compartmented information facilities (SCIFs) across every war college campus, repairing facilities, modernizing digital infrastructure and resolving manning shortages, including black mold and obsolete networks found at National Defense University facilities, and establishing dedicated research institutes within the war colleges to study the America First defense paradigm. The composition of boards of visitors is also being overhauled to ensure rigorous oversight, he said.
Hegseth also said the colleges must confront recent American strategic failures, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Abbey Gate attack that killed 13 U.S. service members, the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, and the civil-military questions raised by a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during a presidential transition. The War Department released its professional military education reform directives the same day, including the end of tenure for newly hired civilian faculty, which GSM has reported separately; this story covers the implementation details announced in the speech itself.
(Source: U.S. Department of War)
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[Video Secretary of War Hegseth Speaks at the Naval War College in Newport on November 9]
Source: U.S. Department of War
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于罗德岛州 Newport 的美国海军战争学院 Founders Hall，该楼为学院博物馆所在地。Leonard J. DeFrancisci 摄，CC BY-SA 3.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Founders Hall at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, home of the Naval War College Museum. By Leonard J. DeFrancisci, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- 2026-11-08[Video] Secretary of War Pete Hegseth addresses Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, on November 9
- 2026-11-09Hegseth Orders Sweeping Overhaul of Professional Military Education, Scrapping Lifetime Tenure for New Civilian Faculty
- 2026-11-09Hegseth Announces 33 Military College Reform Directives at Naval War College: 80-Page Theses Out, Wargaming InThis story
