Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has created and installed himself as chairman of a new Pentagon advisory board focused on homeland defense, the first of its kind at the Defense Department, after dismissing the members of every existing advisory committee last year.
The Homeland Defense Board, announced in the Federal Register on September 11, will advise Hegseth on military missions inside the United States and across the Western Hemisphere, from border deployments to countering foreign influence to protecting defense infrastructure. Establishing documents published alongside the announcement argue that no other federal body, civilian or military, can deliver the kind of advice the Pentagon now needs on homeland security.
The board arrives at a moment when the military's domestic footprint has expanded sharply. Troops remain deployed along the southern border. National Guard units have fanned out to major American cities to support law enforcement. The Pentagon has taken on drug interdiction missions once handled almost exclusively by the U.S. Coast Guard. And Hegseth, who has faced questions about his Pentagon leadership from both parties, is now positioning himself at the center of all of it.
Pentagon documents say no other agency can fill this role
The establishing documents lay out a blunt case for why the board exists. They argue that the Department of Homeland Security's own advisory council "lacks the mandate to advise on Title 10 or Title 32 deployments", the legal authorities that govern sending active-duty and National Guard troops into domestic operations, and cannot address military-specific crises. The State Department's International Security Advisory Board, the documents add, is "underequipped" to deliver strategies for military campaign plans in the Americas.
As Military Times reported, the justifying documents describe a threat environment that has grown "more intense and complex" over the past decade, driven by "peer, near-peer, and rogue-state adversaries, in addition to non-state actors and hostile asymmetric activities."
The board's charter spells out an ambitious mandate. It will advise Hegseth on "multi-theater security cooperation and multi-domain actions," validate that Pentagon spending is "successfully countering foreign influence, disrupting transnational criminal networks, and building robust partner-nation military capabilities," and bridge what the documents describe as a gap between the military and domestic homeland security agencies.
The establishing documents put it starkly:
"Without this advisory body, the DoW risks strategic blind spots in its primary mission to protect the Homeland."
That acronym, DoW, for "Department of War", reflects the Trump administration's preferred name for the Defense Department. Legislation to make the name change official is pending in Congress.
Hegseth cleared the old boards before building this one
The new board did not emerge from nothing. It grew out of the space Hegseth himself cleared. In March 2025, the defense secretary dismissed every member of every Pentagon advisory board and launched what he called a "zero-based review" of whether each committee contributed to what he termed "warrior ethos."
That review ended with casualties. The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, a 75-year-old institution, was shut down. So was the Defense Advisory Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct. The purge drew criticism, but it also reflected Hegseth's broader effort to reshape the Pentagon's internal culture, an effort that has drawn both predictions of his ouster and firm White House support.
Roughly 40 federal advisory committees still serve the Pentagon, according to the General Services Administration. But none of them, the establishing documents argue, can deliver the "consensus-based, independent, and external peer review required at the highest levels of strategic decision-making" on homeland defense.
The documents add that relying on internal Pentagon staff or contracted studies alone "is also insufficient" for this purpose.
Up to 20 members, handpicked by Hegseth's office
The Homeland Defense Board will include up to 20 members, a mix of civilian appointees and military representatives from each service branch. The assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs and two deputy assistant secretaries will sit on the board alongside "such other members as the SecWar or the Deputy Secretary of War may appoint or designate."
No names have been announced. And when asked about the board's creation, an unnamed Pentagon official told reporters the department had "nothing to provide." That silence is notable for a board the department's own documents describe as essential to avoiding "strategic blind spots."
Hegseth came to the Pentagon without senior national security or management experience at the department level. AP News reported at the time of his nomination that he served as an infantry captain in the Army National Guard with deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, and had co-hosted Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends Weekend" since 2014. President Trump, announcing the pick, said America's enemies were "on notice" with Hegseth at the helm.
His tenure has not been without turbulence. The resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll after reported clashes with Hegseth underscored the friction inside the building. And Hegseth's decision to block multiple Army officers from promotion to two-star general signaled a willingness to use his authority aggressively, even at the cost of institutional pushback.
A board built for a Pentagon that now polices the homeland
The Homeland Defense Board's creation reflects a reality that has been building for months: the American military is doing more inside the United States than at any point in recent memory. Troops patrol the border. Guard units deploy to cities. The Pentagon has muscled into drug interdiction. And the legal frameworks governing those missions, Title 10 for active-duty forces, Title 32 for National Guard troops under federal orders, carry serious constitutional weight.
The establishing documents frame the board as a necessary bridge between the military and civilian agencies like DHS, one that can secure "defense critical infrastructure, vital transport networks and logistics nodes and the defense industrial base." They describe a Western Hemisphere where "peer and near-peer adversaries are actively projecting economic, cyber, and military power" and argue the board will provide "critical, independent assessments of the DoW's hemispheric defensive posture and domestic security preparedness."
Whether the board delivers genuinely independent assessments will depend on who sits on it, and how much distance its members keep from the man who chairs it and appoints them. That question remains unanswered.
Hegseth tore down the old advisory structure because he said it had lost its way. Now he has built a new one, placed himself at its head, and pointed it at the mission he considers most urgent. The Pentagon's expanding homeland role needed oversight and strategic counsel. Whether a board chaired by the same official it advises can provide that counsel with the independence the charter promises is the test that matters now.
