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During Congressional testimony from Department of Defense leadership last week, Representative George Whitesides asked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, “How does canceling a command-initiated review support a culture of accountability?” But before the secretary could answer, Whitesides instead decided to direct the question to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine. Clearly uncomfortable with the question, Caine replied, “What you are alluding to … is a partisan question.” The exchange occupied only a few minutes amid days of acrimonious testimony focused primarily on the war with Iran, but reflected how partisan considerations have now extended to issues of safety and adherence to standards. This is an exceptionally dangerous incursion of partisanship into the U.S. military — one that strikes directly at its ability to maintain good order and discipline.
On March 28, two AH-64 Apache helicopters from the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade at Fort Campbell flew near “No Kings” protestors in Nashville before flying to the home of musician Robert “Kid Rock” Ritchie, who has been a consistent and vocal supporter of the Trump administration. Kid Rock took pictures and video of the helicopters hovering near his mansion, which he later posted online along with derogatory comments about the Democratic governor of California.
The high-profile nature of helicopters flying near a large public gathering and then hovering near a private residence led to widespread media coverage and raised several concerns, the first of which were safety and the appropriate use of government resources. Even President Donald Trump, when asked about the flight, stated, “Well, they probably shouldn’t have been doing it. Yes, you’re not supposed to be playing games, right?”
These circumstances led military leaders to initiate an Army Regulation 15-6 administrative investigation, announced three days after the flights on March 31. In this case, unfortunately, procedures for reviewing the event were circumvented by Hegseth. Almost as soon as it was reported that the chain of command for the aviators in question had initiated an administrative investigation, Hegseth shut it down, proclaiming in a social media post, “No punishment. No investigation. Carry on, patriots.”
While it is within the secretary’s legal authority to shut down an administrative investigation, such interference is highly unusual, particularly when the details of an incident are still unknown. He likely viewed it as a favorable gesture to the pilots, but this decision does these aviators — and the Army — no favors.
Both of us, when serving as an infantry officer and a Special Forces non-commissioned officer, respectively, have had experience with 15-6 investigations. These types of investigations serve several essential purposes. They uncover the basic facts of the case, helping units understand if and how regulations or safety procedures were violated. They also give a chance for those involved to explain their motivations and any extenuating circumstances that influenced their actions. Importantly, these investigations prevent commanders from rushing to judgment and help ensure that all aspects of the incident are fully understood. This methodical approach helps capture lessons learned. The findings are then used to better educate and train those involved and disseminate the lessons to other soldiers with similar responsibilities. In the words of an Army spokesperson, the investigation would allow the Army to review “the circumstances surrounding the mission, including compliance with relevant [Federal Aviation Administration] regulations, aviation safety protocol, and approval requirements.”
In this case, such a hearing would have clarified the training objectives of the mission, what safety measures were taken to mitigate risk to lives or property during the operation, and the motivations of the pilots for conducting a flyby of a private residence.
Military pilots are trained to fly in dangerous circumstances, but do so within a culture of closely managed risk and adherence to rigorous safety standards. Maneuvers over civilian crowds and hovering near residential housing are particularly fraught as they may place non-military personnel at risk. They are therefore subject to even greater scrutiny, raising the question of whether these specific maneuvers were briefed and if appropriate safety measures were implemented before their execution.
These are not issues the aviation community takes lightly. According to a former Army instructor pilot and member of the Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, merely deviating from an approved mission brief could be grounds for downgraded flight status and mandated retraining. It would therefore be routine for the military to review whether established standards were upheld in the conduct of this training flight. Such an investigation would not only reinforce standards for safety but also emphasize the need for extra care in how the military presents itself to the American public.
Adherence to high standards and a willingness to conduct investigations when those standards may have been violated are a feature of the American military and contribute in no small part to the public’s high regard for the institution. As Kori Schake remarks in her recent book on American civil-military relations, “The respect that accrues to the military from the American public because it considers it different and better than most other institutions of public life rests on a foundation of procedural legitimacy — that is, on the belief that the military has rules by which individuals within the institution are governed.”
The secretary’s cancellation of the investigation strikes at the core of the military’s ability to review the actions of service members to ensure they have met established standards. Members of the military are entrusted with multi-million-dollar weapons systems and aircraft, and they maintain that trust by being disciplined stewards of public resources. In this case, it remains unclear that they were.
While the question of adherence to flight regulations and safety standards is paramount, the second question to be covered by such an investigation would have been the motivations for the flight, something no less important for the reputation of these pilots and the military writ large. Soldiers are human and, much like other Americans, have personal preferences in music — and politics — but there are limits to how and when they can express their personal opinions. Those limits are particularly stringent when personal decisions about how to use military equipment might be interpreted as an institutional endorsement.
Was the flyby an unplanned opportunity to engage with a local celebrity? Or if it was intentional, did senior leaders on Fort Campbell approve the predictable social media messaging that was likely to come from the demonstration?
Without an investigation, the motivations of the pilots are now open to interpretation and will likely break along partisan lines. Attendees at the No Kings rally may view these pilots and the military as willing agents of one party, while fans of Kid Rock are likely to view the Army as more on their side. Both viewpoints degrade the reputation of a military in service to all Americans.
Avoiding perceptions of partisan capture has been one of the most pressing challenges of civil-military relations in recent years. Partisan political actors have an incentive to portray the military — a widely respected institution — as not just an effective tool to be used against foreign threats, but as a group loyal to their side in domestic political struggles. As scholars such as Peter Feaver and Michael Robinson have shown, members of a political party are more likely to have higher confidence in the military if they view it as being on their side, and correspondingly more distrustful if they believe the military to be aligned with their political opponents. There are at least two negative consequences to this.
First, this can introduce a high degree of volatility into military personnel decisions as leadership of the American government inevitably changes hands between the parties, and those parties reward or punish individual leaders on the basis of perceived partisan loyalty. At the beginning of Trump’s first term in office, he was fond of describing the military team serving him as “my generals,” seeking to personally claim the reputation of the military as his own. But as his relationship with senior military leaders and the retired officers he invited into his cabinet soured, Republicans became less deferential to military leaders. Trump and his team’s dislike of these military leaders, and the belief that senior officers had been further politicized under President Joe Biden, manifested in a string of high-profile firings of top generals and admirals when he returned to office for his second term.
A lot of attention has been paid to these firings, but the second negative consequence of partisan capture may have more lasting implications for the overall health of the institution. As more Americans believe the military is on one side or another, or that military leaders have partisan loyalties, there will be an upper limit on approval of the military that corresponds with the proportion of Americans who believe the military shares their partisan leanings. Civilian leaders and the public may also become less trusting of military leaders perceived as not sharing their domestic political viewpoints, regardless of professional competence. Conversely, they may refrain from providing critical oversight of military leaders viewed as being on their side.
A variant of this latter dynamic took place in the aftermath of the flyby when, before the investigation was terminated, Kid Rock suggested that, “I think they’re gonna be all right, my buddy’s [the] commander in chief,” directly implying that disciplinary standards would likely be trumped by personal, partisan loyalties.
They were, and in the short term, the pilots involved may have been relieved at avoiding an administrative investigation, but there will be longer-term implications in the absence of an investigation. Subordinates of these pilots may rightfully wonder whether they will be held to established safety standards or can flaunt regulations and use government aircraft for flybys of their own favorite singers — or if such acts will only be excused if in the service of conservative-leaning local celebrities. Junior leaders may now also believe that overt partisanship might serve as a “get out of jail free” card if appeals to the secretary can shut down chain of command inquiries.
Four weeks after the events in Nashville, Hegseth invited Kid Rock to fly in Apache helicopters in Washington, D.C. The event was described by the Pentagon spokesperson as an “opportunity for Kid Rock to thank service members, highlight the professionalism of the men and women supporting the mission, and recognize their continued sacrifice in honor of our nation.” As an implicit endorsement of the politics of Kid Rock and a further signal that publicity in line with the partisan preferences of the secretary will allow soldiers to escape procedural review of adherence to regulations, these events did not ”highlight” the military’s professionalism. Instead, they further short-circuited the standards upon which the military’s reputation for professionalism rests, leading Caine to acknowledge in front of Congress that safety standards and procedures for review are now open to partisan interpretation.
Jason Dempsey is a co-editor of Bend but Do Not Break: Shaping the Future of the All-Volunteer Force and author of Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations. He previously served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army.
Matthew Rambo is a graduate student studying international security at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He served for over a decade in the U.S. Army and Army Special Forces.
Image: SECWAR via Wikimedia Commons
