Joint Chiefs Chairman Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford testifies before the Senate Committee on Armed Services on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. | Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Top general says transgender troops can serve, warns on readiness

The nation's top military officer on Tuesday told Congress that transgender troops who meet existing standards should not be kicked out of the military, underscoring the Pentagon leadership's reluctance to carry out President Donald Trump's earlier call to ban them from serving "in any capacity."

“I believe any individual who meets the physical and mental standards and is worldwide-deployable and currently serving should be afforded the opportunity to continue to serve," Marine Gen. Joe Dunford told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a hearing on his reappointment as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.


Dunford’s advice meshes with “interim guidance” that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis issued earlier this month for the military to follow while a study on transgender service members is underway.

In July, Trump tweeted that transgender people would not be allowed to serve in the military “in any capacity.” But a more formal directive Trump signed in August banning new transgender recruits deferred to the Pentagon on what to do about transgender troops already in uniform.

“That’s my advice in private and just provided in public,” Dunford told senators. In response to a question from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), the general added that he would be open to meeting with transgender troops to discuss their service.

Dunford’s testimony covered a wide range of front-burner issues, ranging from personnel and combat readiness to the current situations in Afghanistan and the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea, Dunford said, is the most “urgent” threat facing the United States today, while Russia remains its most militarily capable current adversary and China the most worrisome future threat.

“Today, we have a competitive advantage over any adversary,” the general said. “However, that advantage has eroded in recent years,” with electronic warfare and the cyber domain as areas where he does not take U.S. dominance for granted.

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Dunford warned that budgetary constraints have wrought havoc on the readiness of many military units and drew a comparison to another “period of time when we weren’t properly resourced,” the late 1970s, when he was a Marine lieutenant.

He offered the examples of a Navy warship he recently visited that had been at sea 70 percent of the time during the past year, “an unsustainable rate,” and aviation units whose pilots used to fly 30 or more hours per month but now fly only 15.

When pilots fly that few training hours, he said, “you may very well find out about it because it’s a Class-A mishap.”

“I anticipate managing risk in a different way until we can grow the capacity to meet the demand” for military forces around the world, Dunford said.