Which units did pete hegseth serve with in the army and national guard?
Executive summary
Pete Hegseth served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard with assignments in the Minnesota and New Jersey Army National Guard and deployments to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq (with the 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division) and Afghanistan; multiple official biographies and news outlets describe him rising to the rank of major and serving in those units and deployments [1][2][3][4].
1. Commissioned as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard
Hegseth was commissioned after graduating from Princeton as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard; official Department of Defense and War Department biographies repeat that description, which frames his entire military résumé as National Guard infantry service [3][5].
2. State affiliations — Minnesota and New Jersey National Guard
Sources identify Hegseth’s early Guard service with the Minnesota Army National Guard (noted in multiple biographies) and also cite service with a New Jersey Army National Guard unit when he was sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004–2005, indicating he served with different state Guard organizations during his early career [1][2].
3. Guantanamo Bay duty (JTF‑GTMO) in 2004–2005
Reporting and biographical entries say Hegseth served roughly 2004–2005 at Guantanamo Bay as part of a New Jersey Army National Guard unit (joint task force JTF‑GTMO is specifically named in some accounts), where he completed an 11‑month tour as a Guardsman early in his career [1][6].
4. Iraq deployment — 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, infantry platoon leader
Multiple profiles report that after Guantanamo he deployed to Iraq as a first lieutenant with the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, serving as an infantry platoon leader in Baghdad in 2005 and later performing civil‑military operations in Samarra in 2006 [2][6].
5. Afghanistan service and counterinsurgency instruction
Later in his career Hegseth returned to the Guard as a captain and volunteered to teach at a Counterinsurgency Training Center in Kabul, Afghanistan, for about eight months during U.S. drawdown activities; several sources summarize this deployment and teaching role [1][3].
6. Rank and service timeline summarized by multiple outlets
Sources say Hegseth rose to the rank of major and served intermittently over a roughly two‑decade span in the Army National Guard, with service dates cited variously as 2002–2021 or in separate windows (2003–2006, 2010–2014, 2019–2021 in a veteran‑community summary), and that he received combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan [7][8][4].
7. Areas where sources disagree or are imprecise
Some accounts emphasize Minnesota as his original Guard affiliation (Princeton to Minnesota Guard) while others emphasize the New Jersey Guard unit tied to his Guantanamo deployment; available sources do not provide a single contiguous personnel file explaining transfers between state Guard assignments, so the precise administrative route (how and when he moved between state Guard units) is not exhaustively documented in the materials provided [1][2][6].
8. Context and why unit details matter
Unit names and state affiliations matter because they shape the record of deployments, chain of command and incidents tied to those formations; for example, scrutiny of events involving Hegseth’s former brigade have appeared in reporting discussing controversies tied to units that served in the same Iraq theater, and news outlets use unit identification to connect veterans to operational histories [9][10].
9. Limitations of available reporting
Available sources provide consistent, overlapping claims about Hegseth’s infantry service, Guantanamo tour, 3rd Brigade/101st deployment to Baghdad, and later teaching in Kabul, but they do not publish a single official state‑by‑state personnel record showing exact dates of transfer between the Minnesota and New Jersey Guard units; available sources do not mention the administrative paperwork underlying those moves [1][2][6].
10. Bottom line for the reader
Conservative and mainstream biographical profiles and official Defense Department summaries converge on this description: Hegseth was an Army National Guard infantry officer who served at Guantanamo Bay with a New Jersey Guard unit, deployed to Iraq with the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division as an infantry platoon leader, later served in Afghanistan as a counterinsurgency instructor, and rose to major [3][2][6][4].