U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin will be at least the fifth top echelon military officer to leave his post involuntarily since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
The others include former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Vice Chief of the Air Force Gen. James Slife, and Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh, who headed U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency until his firing by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Apr. 3.
On Monday, the Air Force said that Allvin is to retire “effective on or about Nov. 1.”
Military observers cautioned that the firings could represent a dangerous turn toward political loyalty tests for uniformed officers and a hollowing out of the officer corps.
Candidates to replace Allvin include Air Force Gen. Thomas Bussiere, the head of Air Force Global Strike Command near Barksdale, La.–the hometown of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and newly retired Air Force Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, who headed Air Combat Command and Pacific Air Forces in two of his previous jobs. Last month, Trump nominated Bussiere to replace Slife as Air Force Vice Chief of Staff.
Allvin, who has spearheaded the service’s “reoptimization for Great Power competition” begun under the Biden administration, is not even two years into his four-year Air Force Chief of Staff stint, which began on Nov. 2, 2023.
On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Allvin was “informed last week that he would be asked to retire and that the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wanted to go in another direction.”
Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily originally published this article.
