Generally Speaking

There was an ominous sounding story circulating about how Trump's Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, has summoned all of his generals to Washington - apparently this is very unusual. I guess it could mean they are about to launch a major new war, but more likely it's some culture wars thing. Maybe they are going to kick all Democrats out of the military.

Anyway, I got to wondering. You, like me, may have thought that there are a handful of generals (in the US military). It turns out, there are over 800. Almost all of them report to a dozen or so "four star generals", the number of which is specified per branch (eg. the army has X, the navy has Y) and in some hard to change way. These generals report to someone like Hegseth or similar bureaucrat / cabinet position, etc. Some report directly to DJT himself.

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