Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is standing up a new 20-member Pentagon advisory board focused squarely on defending the homeland, filling a gap the department's own establishing documents say no other federal panel, agency, or outside source can cover.
The Homeland Defense Board, announced in the Federal Register on September 11, marks the first Pentagon advisory committee dedicated to homeland security and defense, The Hill reported. Hegseth will serve as chairman. The vice chair will be the Defense Department's assistant secretary for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs, though the Pentagon has not publicly named the individual who will fill that seat. When the announcement first went out, the buzz around town was that Hegseth was being dismissed from his Secretary position, but he is just adding to his duties.
The board arrives at a moment when the military's domestic footprint is larger than it has been in years. More than 3,000 National Guard troops are deployed in Washington, D.C., supporting law enforcement. An ongoing military campaign runs along the U.S.-Mexico border. And American forces have carried out strikes on suspected drug-carrying boats in waters around Central and South America. The HDB is designed to give the defense secretary independent, expert-level counsel on all of it, and on the legal authorities that govern it.
The Pentagon's justification for the new board is blunt. Its establishing documents state that over the past ten years, "rather than lessening, the threat from peer, near-peer, and rogue-state adversaries, in addition to non-state actors and hostile asymmetric activities, has become more intense and more complex." Without the HDB, the department "risks strategic blind spots in its primary mission to protect the Homeland."
The documents go further, explaining why existing advisory bodies across the federal government fall short. The Department of Homeland Security's advisory council, for instance, "focuses exclusively on civilian law enforcement, border management, and emergency response" and "lacks the mandate to advise on Title 10 or Title 32 deployments", the federal legal authorities that govern sending active-duty troops or National Guard forces into domestic operations.
The State Department's International Security Advisory Board fared no better in the Pentagon's assessment. That body, oriented toward diplomacy and arms control, was described as "unequipped" to evaluate military campaign plans or defense strategies in North and South America.
Even the Pentagon's own internal resources came up short. Relying on "staff or contracted studies is also insufficient," the documents state, "as it fails to provide the consensus-based, independent, and external peer review required at the highest levels of strategic decision-making."
The board's establishing documents, as Just The News reported, note that while other agencies and departments "operate within specific mission or geographic areas, their advisory mechanisms are statutorily constrained to their respective non-military domains." That constraint is exactly the gap the HDB is built to close.
The board will seat 20 members described as "eminent authorities" in homeland defense, military strategy, defense support of civil authorities, interagency integration, critical infrastructure and cybersecurity, strategic competition, and western hemisphere policy. Beyond Hegseth and the vice chair, each military department will contribute one Pentagon civilian officer and one field-grade or mid-grade officer. The full roster has not been disclosed.
Its stated mission: deliver "critical, independent assessments" of the Defense Department's "hemispheric defensive posture and domestic security preparedness." That language signals a board with broad reach, covering everything from border operations to the military's role in responding to domestic emergencies to strategic positioning across the Americas.
The HDB did not emerge from a vacuum. It is the product of a deliberate overhaul Hegseth launched shortly after taking office. In March 2025, he purged all members of every existing Pentagon advisory panel and ordered a 45-day "zero-based review" of roughly 40 advisory committees across the department.
That review wrapped up in May 2025. It recommended cutting 14 defense advisory groups. Among the casualties was the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, a body first established in 1951. Hegseth terminated it, accusing the committee of "advancing a divisive feminist agenda."
The sequence tells a clear story: strip the old structure down, identify what the department actually needs, and rebuild from scratch. The HDB is the first major product of that rebuild, and it is aimed at what Hegseth and the Pentagon's own documents identify as the most urgent gap in the advisory architecture.
The move fits a pattern. When President Trump nominated Hegseth for the Pentagon post, Trump said that with Hegseth "at the helm, America's enemies are on notice, Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down." Hegseth, a decorated Army veteran and former Fox News host, was chosen in part for his willingness to challenge the defense establishment's existing priorities.
That willingness has shown up in other areas. Hegseth recently announced the termination of a program that had allowed Chinese engineers to support sensitive Pentagon cloud systems, a practice exposed by a ProPublica investigation into Microsoft's operations. National Review reported that Hegseth ordered a third-party audit of code developed by Chinese nationals and required all Pentagon software vendors to cut Chinese involvement with Defense Department systems. "We expect vendors doing business with the Department of Defense to put U.S. national security ahead of profit maximization," Hegseth said.
The board's creation comes as the Pentagon's domestic role is expanding on multiple fronts. The 3,000-plus National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., represent one of the largest sustained domestic deployments in recent memory. Border operations continue to draw military resources. And strikes against suspected narcotics vessels in the western hemisphere add an expeditionary dimension to what the Pentagon frames as homeland defense.
NPR reported in mid-September on growing fears that President Trump could deploy federalized National Guard troops around polling locations ahead of November midterm elections, or seek to use the military to influence elections, even as federal laws prohibit such action. The HDB's mandate to advise on Title 10 and Title 32 deployments, the legal authorities governing active-duty and National Guard operations on American soil, places it at the center of those debates.
Hegseth's critics, including some in Congress, have questioned his qualifications for the Pentagon's top job since his nomination. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner at the time of the nomination that "Trump was tired of fighting with his secretaries of defense and picked one who would be loyal to him." But Hegseth's record since taking office, purging advisory committees, rebuilding them around new priorities, ending Chinese access to Pentagon cloud systems, and now standing up a board focused on the homeland, suggests a secretary focused on reshaping the department's advisory infrastructure around threats he considers neglected.
Several details about the HDB remain unclear. The Pentagon has not disclosed the full list of 20 members or when the board will hold its first meeting. The identity of the vice chair, whoever currently holds the assistant secretary post for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs, has not been publicly confirmed in connection with the board. And the fate of all 14 advisory groups flagged for elimination during the zero-based review has not been fully accounted for.
Defense News first reported the board's existence. The establishing documents were published in the Federal Register, but the Pentagon has not released additional details about the board's operating procedures or timeline.
What is clear is the board's scope. Its mandate covers homeland defense, military strategy, domestic troop deployments, critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, and western hemisphere security. That is a broad portfolio, and one that touches nearly every domestic controversy involving the military, from border operations to election-season deployments to the legal limits on using troops inside the United States.
When the Pentagon itself says it has been flying with "strategic blind spots" on its primary mission to protect the homeland, the right response is not another committee that meets quarterly and files reports no one reads. It is a board with real authority, chaired by the man responsible for fixing the problem. That is what Hegseth built.
