Former Undersecretary of Defense Robert Wilkie told Newsmax Friday that under the new leadership in the Department of Defense, "the housecleaning has to be deeper than just people" because the military needs an "overhaul."
President-elect Donald Trump Trump picked as his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, a veteran and Fox News commentator who has signaled a willingness to clean house at the Pentagon.
"We have to get back to training standards that not only increase lethality, but also increase the survivability of our troops on the battlefield. We have to rearm," Wilkie told "Carl Higbie FRONTLINE."
"We have to do the mundane things like produce artillery shells and precision-guided munitions and fill the seas with our submarines and ships. That's the kind of overhaul we need."
Wilkie compared the top-heavy structure of today's military to how the armed forces were structured during World War II.
"Just to give you a quick statistic: We have more generals and admirals now with about 2 million people under arms than we had when Japan surrendered, and we had 16 million people in uniform. We have not held our officer corps to the highest standards," he said.
The former secretary of Veteran Affairs concluded by saying had Vice President Kamala Harris been elected, the nation would have had allocated only 2% of gross domestic product to defense.
"And that is something that has not happened since the administration of Calvin Coolidge, and I admit it's a much more dangerous world than it was when he was president."
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