On 5 May, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in a remarkable reversal of decades of inflation within the United States Department of Defense Flag and General Officer (FOGO) Corps, directed “a minimum 20% reduction of 4-star positions across the Active Component; a minimum 20% reduction of general officers in the National Guard; and an additional minimum 10% reduction in general and flag officers with the realignment of the Unified Command Plan.”

The secretary rightly justified this action to ensure the combat lethality of the U.S. military by cultivating “exceptional senior leaders who drive innovation and operational excellence, unencumbered by unnecessary bureaucratic layers that hinder their growth and effectiveness.”

While critics and skeptics in Washington reflexively circle the wagons to retain this bloated corps of senior officers, this should be just the first step in restoring the warfighting ethos that has made America’s military the most lethal fighting force on the planet.

In addition to the overall reduction in FOGO positions, service promotion board precepts must be reviewed by the Secretary and service chiefs to ensure that all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and other ideologically “woke” instructions are erased and never allowed to be used again to select our future senior admirals and generals. The precepts, the principal tool for selecting future admirals and generals, should be rewritten to promote officers with sustained superior service at sea or in the field. This is especially important for those officers who have a proven track record of experience and excellence in the Indo-Pacific area of responsibility, who will undoubtedly confront an increasingly aggressive and lethal People’s Liberation Army.

Likewise, the Department of Defense needs to restore a cadre of regional experts, like it did during the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Given the past decade of senior Navy officers with Pacific experience being gutted due to the Fat Leonard Scandal or the collisions in the Western Pacific in 2017, it is imperative that the Department of Defense and the Navy have senior officers with experience and understanding of the threat from the People’s Republic of China.

Yet, there is one other major recommendation for the Secretary of Defense that concerns the reduction of useless bureaucracy. Fortunately, Secretary Hegseth has a historical model to use. In September 1998, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral Jay Johnson, a naval aviator, ordered a 25% reduction in programs, inspections, and required paperwork for the fleet. Admiral Johnson understood that over the decades since the Vietnam War and the fall of the Soviet Union, the shore bureaucracy had continued to levy red tape requirements on the fleet, and this was disrupting our warfighting proficiency.

As was noted in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings in 1999, “Over the past three decades, the Navy has implemented a myriad of highly prescriptive programs designed to standardize everything from how we operate nuclear power plants to how we route a leave chit. These programs were developed by intelligent, well-meaning people trying to solve real problems, and many have been critical in producing a safer, more professional, and more combat-ready Navy. Unfortunately, many more have been less effective, or worse yet, have produced few tangible results. We meticulously inspected for compliance with a process, but too often we failed to define or measure the effectiveness of the process itself.”

Now, after another quarter century of unchecked bureaucratic red tape, the Defense Department finds itself struggling under a similar burden that is again impacting our national warfighting lethality.

For example, why are 5,000 soldiers at Fort Bliss required to annually recertify their Common Access Cards (CAC) to eat at the dining facilities? Or why is the Defense Travel System (DTS) still more user-unfriendly than any civilian airline/travel booking program? Or why does the Department of Defense have agencies, like the Office of Economic Assistance, which supports communities affected by base closures—a function largely obsolete since the last major closures in 2005? This agency, and many more like it, maintain bloated bureaucracies with overlapping roles in logistics, IT, and HR, draining resources without promoting warfighting lethality. Or why are the department’s maintenance procedures requiring extensive documentation for routine tasks like replacing a tire, with each form needing supervisory approval? While rooted in accountability, filling out these forms now takes longer than the repairs themselves.

What is the solution to this burden?

The Secretary of Defense should follow the example set by CNO Johnson in 1998 and establish a DoD Review Board (DRB) that would be empowered to “conduct a comprehensive review of all programs, inspections, instructions, and assist visits affecting operating forces.” The objective would be to reduce workload by 50% (a 25% increase from what Admiral Johnson levied in 1998) and would allow commanding officers increased discretionary time and military personnel more time at home with their families. This task of deregulating and decentralizing would be accomplished by placing the “responsibility, authority, and empowerment—trust—at the proper level… that of the unit commanding officer.” Or in other words, “Let leaders lead.”

Using common sense, the secretary would tell commanding officers what is expected of them, provide the tools for them to get the job done, and then allow them to use their discretion “to use those tools when, where, and how they deem appropriate for their units.”

One word of caution. Any reduction of requirements at a service level can be upended by a similar requirement at the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) or Joint Staff levels. As such, the DRB must have alignment up and down the chain and across the services, all with the same goal to dramatically reduce the amount of mind-numbing and non-combat proficiency-related tasks that are placed on our service members and unit commanding officers.

This is not to say that real safety and maintenance procedures and redundancies should be thrown out. Rather, it is a call for common sense that comes up from the bottom, not from the top down.

So, while reducing the bloated ranks of the FOGO corps is a welcome announcement, the lack of warfighting proficiency and readiness will never get better unless there is also a concurrent reduction of the mindless and seemingly endless bureaucratic requirements that have nothing to do with warfighting. The most important thing the Secretary of Defense can do is to form his own version of a “Fleet Review Board” for the entire Department of Defense and demand that they come up with a 50% reduction in useless inspections, programs, and paperwork. Then demand alignment among and across the services to include OSD and the Joint Staff.

This will not be easy, as he will be asking OSD bureaucrats to put themselves out of work, but unless we dismantle the mind-numbing requirements that consume so much of our warfighters’ time, energy, and attention, we will not be ready to deter or defeat the PLA.

James E. Fanell served as a career naval intelligence officer whose positions included senior intelligence officer for China at the Office of Naval Intelligence and chief of intelligence for CTF-70, Seventh Fleet, and the U.S. Pacific Fleet. He is the co-author of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.