Hegseth Adds Warfighter Test For Generals
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is forcing every colonel and Navy captain who wants a first star to survive a simulated-combat evaluation first. The message to the officer corps is blunt: prove you can fight and win before you are handed a general’s rank.
The path to general has long rewarded the polished staff officer over the warfighter. A standardized combat test applied to every candidate is the clearest move yet to promote on lethality instead of paperwork.
How it works
The test screens for the first star. Eligible O-6s, meaning colonels and Navy captains, must undergo the new Joint Warfighter Evaluation before promotion boards will consider them for brigadier general or rear admiral.
It runs on simulated combat. The assessment measures operational planning, decision-making, and leadership under simulated combat conditions, using written analysis and digital war games against AI-driven adversaries.
The rollout is dated. Hegseth announced it Tuesday, with first-cycle assessments running February to June 2027 and promotion boards following July to September 2027.
By the numbers
- The Air Force feels it most. Roughly 1,330 Air Force colonels fall under the new requirement, the largest single group.
- The Army is close behind. About 900 Army colonels will sit the evaluation, alongside 125 Space Force officers.
- The sea services round it out. Around 308 Navy captains and up to 175 Marine colonels are covered, each service running a format tuned to its own fight.
Where things stand
Formats vary by service. The Army uses a remote written assessment and a digital war game, the Navy a written test plus a live war game at the Naval War College, the Marines an eight-hour evaluation on an AI-enabled platform.
It is one data point, not the only one. Officer performance reports remain the backbone of promotion, with the war-game score added on top rather than replacing the record.
The paper trail is thin. The Pentagon has not posted a formal release; the details come from a Hegseth video and internal documents, built on a memo he signed in May directing that warfighting ability be judged in promotions.
In Their Own Words
“Starting this year, eligible O-6s, that’s colonels and Navy captains, screening for one star will undergo this assessment to stratify their ability to fight, adapt, and win.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
What The Other Side Is Doing & How To Neutralize It
The Senate’s ranking Democrat on Armed Services, Jack Reed, has spent the year attacking Hegseth for “politicizing military service” and undermining the “merit-based promotion system,” the standing objection this reform now walks into.
The neutralizer is the reform’s own design: a single scenario-based test scored identically for every candidate is merit, not politics, and groups like STARRS, which push meritocracy and lethality at the Pentagon, are the ones making that case in public. Learn more about STARRS HERE.
What to watch
Every serious military in history has known that the officer who briefs well is not always the officer who fights well, and that the gap between them gets people killed. Hegseth’s test will not perfectly replicate war, and his own advisers concede as much.
But a standardized war game applied to every colonel is a defensible answer to a real problem: a promotion system that has drifted toward rewarding the careerist.
-The Editors
National Security · Upstream of the Swamp · September 24, 2026
