The U.S. Defense Department is an $849 billion enterprise with close to three million employees — 1.3 million of them active-duty service members — and 750 military bases around the world. Its stated mission is to provide “the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”
So President-elect Donald J. Trump’s decision to nominate Pete Hegseth to lead the institution hit immediate headwinds from an array of lawmakers and senior military officials. Mr. Hegseth, a Fox News host, is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he has no senior command experience.
“This is not an entry-level job,” said Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado and a retired Army Ranger, who expressed his opposition to Mr. Hegseth running the Pentagon in a video. “This man is woefully unqualified to make the types of life-and-death decisions the secretary of defense has to make.”
Even some Senate Republicans expressed doubts.
“He’s got his work cut out for him,” Senator Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who was believed to have been on Mr. Trump’s short list for the defense secretary job, said of Mr. Hegseth on Wednesday.
Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, said he was excited about many of Mr. Trump’s nominees. But when it came to Mr. Hegseth, he said, “I don’t know much about his background or vision.”
Democratic lawmakers — even those who often reach across the aisle on national security issues — were more blunt.
Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois and a former Army helicopter pilot, said in a statement that the choice of Mr. Hegseth was “dangerous, plain and simple.”
“Being secretary of defense is a very serious job, and putting someone as dangerously unqualified as Pete Hegseth into that role is something that should scare all of us,” said Ms. Duckworth, who lost her legs in the Iraq war when her Black Hawk was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
“Our troops, our military families and our national security will pay the price,” she said.
Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, was just as frank. “I see no evidence that this person has relationships whatsoever with our overseas partners,” he said. “What is he going to do when working on the various coalitions that we now have?”
Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Hegseth are fans of multilateral coalition building. In podcast interviews and appearances on Fox, Mr. Hegseth has spent far more time criticizing the Pentagon leadership for its diversity efforts than sharing his thoughts on U.S. allies around the world.
During a recent podcast interview, Mr. Hegseth said that Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the senior military adviser to the president, should be fired for being too “woke.” He has also said that “we should not have women in combat roles.”
Mr. Hegseth, one senior Pentagon official said on Thursday, has instead sought to project the image of the Jack Nicholson character in the film “A Few Good Men,” who dramatically proclaims: “You want me on that wall.”
He has vocally supported Army service members accused of war crimes and expressed scorn for so-called elites who do not understand that they “need” strong men to keep them safe.
“We urgently need to strengthen our military and someone who wants to prosecute a culture war will impede rather than advance that urgent need,” said Kori Schake, a former defense official in the George W. Bush administration who directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Eric S. Edelman, who served in the Pentagon during Mr. Bush’s administration and has long opposed Mr. Trump, said that Mr. Hegseth had no background in industry, Congress or the federal government — traditional pipelines to defense secretary.
“There’s nothing in his résumé that would suggest he’s ready for this,” said Mr. Edelman, the vice chairman of a bipartisan, congressionally appointed commission to study threats facing the United States. “There’ll be a lot of on-the-job learning.”
Several current and former military officials, including some of whom commanded Mr. Hegseth while he was deployed overseas, said in interviews this week that while Mr. Hegseth was a capable midgrade officer, he would be far out of his depth in managing the Pentagon.
“He is the most unqualified nominee for secretary of defense in my 74-year-old life,” said Paul D. Eaton, a retired major general and veteran of the Iraq war, listing the issues the defense secretary must manage: billions in defense acquisition, treaty alliances across both the Atlantic and the Pacific, a rigid chain-of-command structure that has been decades in the making.
“And then, when you are starting by alienating 20 percent of the military — the 400,000 women, and telling them, ‘thank you, you’re OK pushing paper around but we don’t want you pulling triggers,’ this is really a bad idea,” he said.
Some Republicans stepped forward to praise Mr. Trump’s choice.
“Obviously the Pentagon is a really big organization that requires lots of talented people,” said Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota. “Operationally, budget-wise, he’ll need to surround himself with good people, and I’m sure he’s capable of doing that.”
Representative Michael Waltz of Florida, Mr. Trump’s pick to be national security adviser, welcomed Mr. Hegseth’s nomination.
Mr. Waltz, a fellow National Guard veteran, posted on social media that the Pentagon “is in need of real reform, and they’re getting a leader who has the grit to make it happen.”
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