That article is silly. The defense secretary cannot arbitrarily fire people like this. He can have a 15-6 investigation opened though, but that is a long way fr

That article is silly. The defense secretary cannot arbitrarily fire people like this. He can have a 15-6 investigation opened though, but that is a long way from a firing. To arbitrarily fire an officer there has to be some immediate violation of law or gross harm with exigencies. Where these immediate firings occur for senior officers is typically a failure of performance in a command position that results in some other greater failure, but this is beyond rare, even in combat.