At press time, it still remains a public mystery why he and NSA deputy Wendy Noble (who was removed and reassigned) were fired from leading the largest intelligence agency — which produces the majority of the intel for the president’s daily brief — and the government’s main cyber warfare entity, Cybercom.

Chief Pentagon spokesperson released a statement late Friday afternoon that read: “The Defense Department thanks General Timothy Haugh for his decades of service to our nation, culminating as U.S. Cyber Command Commander and National Security Agency Director. We wish him and his family well.”

The websites of Cyber Command and NSA were updated Friday afternoon to reflect that Army Lt. Gen. William Hartman is now in charge of both organizations. Hartman had been the deputy commander of Cybercom. Although the commander is dual-hatted to lead both organizations, the deputy Cybercom commander is not part of NSA.

Those that spoke to DefenseScoop noted how rare it is for a sitting NSA director to be fired mid-term, especially absent any loss in confidence to command or a scandal. For context, the director wasn’t removed after the Snowden leaks came to light during the Obama administration.

Although the president does have the authority to remove officers like this, some observers have indicated it might not be a wise use of that power, and could create morale issues.

“I don’t recall an NSA director in recent memory being removed other than during the normal cycle,” said Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, who held positions in the Bush White House, Department of Justice and was senior counsel to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for the Republican chairman Mike Rogers of Michigan. “When a well-regarded, four-star general is fired for no apparent reason — if in fact that’s what happened and even if it is legally permissible — that can have a massively detrimental impact on both ongoing operations and morale.”

Prior to taking office — and in successive confirmation hearings — Trump administration officials expressed an interesting in taking a more aggressive approach in cyberspace against adversaries in the face of high-profile intrusions of telecom firms and critical infrastructure that some say went beyond traditional espionage to prep the battlefield.

“General Tim Haugh is an outstanding leader and was doing a superb job at Cyber Command and National Security Agency. He was fired with no public explanation. This action sets back our Cyber and Signals Intelligence operations,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Nebraska, the chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation and a former one-star Air Force general, said on X.

A slew of Democrat lawmakers issued statements Friday criticizing the administration’s move.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed alarm and anger regarding the decision to fire Haugh — who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate to his role — and oust Noble.

“As the commander of Cyber Command, General Haugh led the most formidable cyber warfighting force in the world and kept our enemies up at night. President Trump has given a priceless gift to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea by purging competence from our national security leadership,” he said. “I have long warned about the dangers of firing military officers as a political loyalty test. In addition to the other military leaders and national security officials Trump has fired, he is sending a chilling message throughout the ranks: don’t give your best military advice, or you may face consequences. The President must immediately explain himself to the American people.”

Reed was referring to assertions that political activist Laura Loomer urged President Donald Trump to fire certain officials due to their perceived disloyalty to him and his agenda. She wrote in a social media post Thursday night that Haugh and Noble were fired for being “disloyal” to Trump. In recent weeks, Trump also fired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, among other senior defense officials.

“It’s concerning, from a national security perspective, when a 9/11 truther is providing advice to the President on whether a four-star general ought keep his job as the head of the world’s premier signals intelligence agency,” Jaffer said regarding the allegations Loomer had something to do with Haugh’s ouster.

Others agreed with that sentiment.

“If this was tied to Loomer’s action, then preparing for a future war against China is taking a back seat to the fight against DEI and those perceived as not loyal enough to the regime,” said Jason Healey, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs with a deep cyber background in the government and military. Healey previously served as a founding member of the Office of the National Cyber Director at the White House and worked at a U.S. military organization that was a precursor to Cybercom.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Alabama, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, did not respond to requests for comment.

“Silence, nothing but silence, from my once honorable colleagues in the GOP who just days ago sat with me in meetings on the Armed Services Committee praising GEN Haugh. Cowering before Trump and complicit in letting a lunatic upend their own national security team, they do nothing to stand up for our troops or our country,” Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., wrote on X Friday.

Top Dems on the House Armed Services Committee issued a joint statement citing their concerns.

“Under [Haugh and Noble’s] leadership, the men and women of US Cyber Command and the National Security Agency have been at the tip of the spear in defense of our country against very real cyber threats, including ransomware extortionists and actors like Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon. Reports that the dismissals were due not to failure to execute their positions but, rather, being accused of being disloyal by a far-right conspiracy theorist are deeply disturbing,” said HASC ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., ranking member of the CITI subcommittee and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., who has taken a keen interest in cyber issues.

Houlahan in a separate statement to DefenseScoop called the firing “inexplicable,” adding it “should leave us all feeling less safe today.”

“There have still been no consequences for anyone over the leaking of classified information over Signal – the real threat. This action—meant in some way to distract us from the Signal and gmail fiascos— to summarily remove the four-star General responsible for the National Security Agency and Cyber Command is chilling,” she said. “The American people deserve answers – now including why General Haugh was relieved of his duties. The case is not, in fact, closed.”

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On March 24, Atlantic magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a story revealing he was accidentally added to a group chat on Signal, an encrypted but unclassified commercial messaging app, where some of the Trump administration’s top national security officials discussed upcoming strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen — including Hegseth.

“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” Steve Stebbins, acting inspector general at the Pentagon, wrote in a memo published Thursday. “Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements.”

Along with Hegseth, the “Houthi PC small group” Signal chat also included Vice President JD Vance, national security advisor Michael Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials.

The scandal — dubbed “SignalGate” — exploded in Washington’s political circles and has been met with stark backlash from members of Congress. On March 27, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Ranking Member Jack Reed, D-R.I., sent a letter to Stebbins calling for an investigation of the incident. 

“If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

While the DOD IG memo does not detail the specific aspects of the incident it will investigate, Wicker and Reed listed six action items they wished to have the watchdog review. Among those are the information communicated in the chat and any remedial actions taken; whether or not that information is considered classified; the Pentagon’s policies related to sharing sensitive and classified information on non-government networks; and recommendations to address issues the IG identifies.

Overall, both the White House and the Pentagon have attempted to downplay the sensitivity of the information shared in the group chat, with many officials denying that the discussions involved classified information. While visiting the Indo-Pacific region the week after the Atlantic’s Signal story was published, Hegseth claimed that he did not discuss “war plans” on the messaging app.

Following backlash from the White House, Goldberg published a follow-up article that shed more light into the messages sent between Hegseth and other officials in the chat — including approximate times that specific weapons and aircraft would be used during the strike.

Despite the new details, Pentagon officials doubled down on their assertion the information wasn’t classified.

“These additional Signal chat messages confirm there were no classified materials or war plans shared,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement. “The Secretary was merely updating the group on a plan that was underway and had already been briefed through official channels. The American people see through the Atlantic’s pathetic attempts to distract from President Trump’s national security agenda.”

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A report accompanying the panel’s version of the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which was released this week, highlighted members’ concerns about where things stand.

“The committee believes that the most effective counter-unmanned aerial systems (UAS) capabilities for the joint force are those using software-defined technologies of autonomy, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning,” they wrote, noting that U.S. Special Operations Command has been using such technologies to rapidly deploy cutting-edge counter-UAS capabilities in combat environments. That includes multi-modal sensing capabilities and vertical take-off and landing, AI-driven autonomous air vehicles that can defeat “Group 3” drones — a category of UAS that includes loitering munitions, which are also known as kamikaze drones or one-way attack drones.

Industry has been developing cutting-edge systems, like Anduril’s Roadrunner-M, that are designed to perform air defense missions.

“The committee is concerned by the obstacles to transitioning these innovative capabilities from SOCOM to conventional forces,” and “the committee is concerned that the Services have not budgeted to sustain and expand these types of critical capabilities,” lawmakers noted in the report.

The legislation would require the acquisition executives for the Army, Navy and Air Force to provide separate briefings to the armed services committees on the Hill by Jan. 31, 2025, on their plans to “resource, transition, and scale advanced, AI-enabled, combat-validated UAS defeat capabilities to conventional forces within their department.”

The wording in the provision is very similar to a House-passed version of the annual defense policy bill, which makes it more likely that this type of directive will be included in the final version of the NDAA that comes out of the House-Senate conference process.

Autonomous air vehicles and tracking capabilities aren’t the only high-tech, drone-killing tools that lawmakers want to see the Defense Department prioritize and accelerate for fielding. They’re also keen on directed energy systems, a category of weapons that includes high-energy lasers and high-power microwaves.

DE tools are seen as a more cost-effective way of defeating large numbers of inexpensive drones, on a cost-per-shot basis, than many of the missiles or “kinetic” interceptors in the U.S. military’s arsenal.

In recent years, batches of UAS have been launched against Ukrainian forces and infrastructure by Russia, against U.S. Navy ships and commercial vessels in the Red Sea by the Houthis, and against American troops in the Middle East by other Iranian-backed groups.

“The committee remains concerned about the threat posed by low-cost attritable aerial drones, especially the threat that drone swarms pose to our forces. The committee notes that conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East clearly demonstrate the utility and proliferation of low-cost attritable aerial drone systems and believes that more must be done to protect U.S. servicemembers from that threat. The committee welcomes the resulting increase in focus of the Department of Defense (DOD) on exploring the use of directed energy systems to defeat these threats at a low cost per engagement,” lawmakers wrote in the report for the SASC version of the policy bill.

“The committee encourages DOD to prioritize rapidly developing and acquiring directed energy systems to defeat large drone swarms and believes that the Department should utilize all available rapid acquisition pathways to develop and acquire directed energy counter drone swarm systems,” they added.

The Pentagon has been experimenting with these types of weapons and deployed some of them overseas, but not on a scale that some officials and advocates would like to see.

The Army has sent a 50-kilowatt laser system to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in the Middle East. Doug Bush, the service’s acquisition chief, said officials are getting important feedback from the effort.

“I think we’re learning a lot about the challenges of integration of that powerful laser system … on a vehicle versus doing it at a fixed site or versus doing a lower-power laser on a vehicle like a Stryker. So I think the learning that’s going on, though, is absolutely informing the [program objective memorandum] decisions being made, budget decisions being made right now in terms of what is most likely to succeed first in the directed energy realm. You know, beyond that, the fact that it’s deployed and being used by real soldiers, again, that’s just the best test we can have. I can’t get into more detail on effectiveness right now because of just security concerns,” Bush told reporters in June.

Meanwhile, Epirus has delivered prototypes derived from its Leonidas system to support the Army’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High-Power Microwave (IFPC-HPM) initiative. The Navy is also experimenting with the technology.

Some U.S. military leaders have expressed frustration that more DE systems haven’t been fielded. Other Defense Department officials have noted that there are still challenges to overcome, including command-and-command issues.

The SASC version of the NDAA would direct the secretary of defense to provide a briefing to the House and Senate armed services committees by Feb. 1, 2025, on all the department’s initiatives to develop and procure DE weapons that could defeat large numbers of enemy drones in a single engagement.

This week, SASC Chair Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Ranking Member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., announced that the committee’s NDAA was filed for the full Senate’s consideration.

“I am glad that this year’s NDAA makes important progress in a number of areas, including … significant support for technologies like counter-drone defenses and AI,” Reed said in a statement, before noting that he had to vote against the passage of the legislation because it includes authorization for a funding increase that can’t be appropriated without busting spending caps.

“I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate and House to find practical ways to strengthen this year’s defense bill,” he said.

In a statement, Wicker said he was “encouraged that many of my colleagues have joined me in the conversation about the need to invest more in our national defense. I look forward to discussing the peace through strength vision I have laid out in the months to come. This year’s NDAA results are a testament to the tradition of bipartisanship, vigorous debate, and good working order on which this committee prides itself.”

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“First is reimagining how we fight. We are in a tremendously dynamic situation where technology is changing rapidly, techniques are changing rapidly, operational issues, we are truly multi-dimensional,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., told the Defense Writers Group Tuesday regarding issues he’d like the SASC to focus on this year.

The proliferation and importance of space capabilities, the reliance and criticality of the electromagnetic spectrum, and ubiquity of software all pose unique challenges and paradigm shifts from previous conflicts and eras.

“All of that has to be reimagined and integrated. And our experience in Ukraine is giving us insights for this transformation,” Reed said. “The most adaptable is the field of electronic warfare and the innovation that they’re seeing taking place, some of it spontaneously on the part of the Ukrainians just doing some ingenious things because desperate times require desperate need. They’re doing it.”

“One of the lessons I take away from this is this battle in Ukraine has been so much for in the spectrum in terms of individual Ukrainians developing software so that someone, anyone with a phone can report the location of a tank. It goes in, it’s analyzed quickly, but [with] the AI and then sent to a shooter. That’s the type of information and type of technique that we have to start evolving,” Reed continued. “The people who fight [like they did during] the last war usually end up losing it, and we don’t want to do that.”

There are steps the military has taken in recent years to get ahead of the curve, he noted. One example is the creation of Army Futures Command to spearhead the service’s modernization initiatives.

He also said there’s a “move afoot” to create a Joint Readiness Command, although he didn’t elaborate on what such an organization would do.

Reimagining how the military fights is all well and good, but it must also be underpinned by concrete modernization efforts, which Reed said will also be a big priority for his committee this year.

“We have to get equipment that is capable of operating effectively. In fact, we have to stay ahead of the competition in this regard. That requires research, investment and also requires developing production, operations and techniques to get the equipment out the door in time,” he said.

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