Trump fires top US military officer in major leadership shake-up

US President Donald Trump has fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General CQ Brown, and announced he would soon swap out five other high level positions in an unprecedented shake-up of the leadership of the US military.

Trump, in a post on Truth Social late on Friday, said he would nominate retired Lieutenant General Dan "Razin" Caine to succeed Brown.

The decision sets off a period of upheaval at the Pentagon, which is already bracing for firings of civilian staff, a dramatic overhaul of its budget and a shift in US military deployments under Trump's new America First foreign policy.

It comes after the US Defense Department said it will cut its civilian workforce by at least five percent starting next week, as Trump seeks to slash the number of government employees.

Trump's administration has already begun firing thousands of other federal workers who are on probationary status, and the cuts at the Defense Department — the largest employer in the United States — will also focus on recently hired employees.

"We anticipate reducing the department's civilian workforce by 5-8 percent to produce efficiencies and refocus the department on the president's priorities and restoring readiness in the force," Darin Selnick, who is performing the duties of under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a Pentagon statement.

"We expect approximately 5,400 probationary workers will be released beginning next week as part of this initial effort, after which we will implement a hiring freeze while we conduct a further analysis of our personnel needs," Selnick said.

A day before the announcement, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a video message that "it is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission critical."

"Common sense would tell us where we should start, right — we start with poor performers amongst our probationary employees," Hegseth said.