WASHINGTON — The Senate has confirmed Lt. Gen. Christopher LaNeve to be the Army’s next Vice Chief of Staff where he will replace Gen. James Mingus, who has served in the position since January 2024.
The Senate confirmation, which took place on Tuesday, comes after LaNeve was nominated by the Trump administration in October for the role. LaNeve currently serves as an advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in his official capacity as the Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense.
In a social media post Tuesday night, Hegseth congratulated LaNeve on his confirmation, calling him a “generational leader” who “will help ensure the Army revives the warrior ethos, rebuilds for the modern battlefield, and deters our enemies around the world.”
Hegseth added, “General LaNeve is a battle-tested leader with decades of operational experience and will accelerate excellence at every echelon.”
Prior to his current role, LaNeve served as the Commanding General of the Eighth Army in the Republic of Korea and before that he served as the Special Assistant to the Commanding General of Army Forces Command and the Commanding General of the 82nd Airborne Division, according to his official bio.
Maj. Peter Sulzona, a spokesperson for Mingus, told Breaking Defense in an email that “[T]he OVCSA [Office of the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army] will begin work to start coordinating the smooth transition between GEN Mingus and LTG LaNeve. There are no specific dates set for LTG LaNeve’s promotion or when he would step into the role of the Vice.”
As for Mingus, a separate Army source told Breaking Defense in October that he “always intended” for the vice chief position to be “his last job,” adding that his stepping down comes “little early but not significant.”
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Before taking his post at the beginning of 2024, Mingus served as the J3, director for operations, and the Director of the Joint Staff in the Pentagon starting in 2020 under then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.
During his time as vice serving under Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, Mingus helped oversee the Army Transformation Initiative, which has cut programs and rearranged funding in line with the service’s new priorities.
Mingus has also overseen the service’s sprawling Next Generation Command and Control initiative — the service’s number one modernization priority that is meant to provide commanders and units a new approach to manage information, data, and command and control with agile and software-based architectures.
“Serving in the Army has been the privilege of his life,” Sulzona added of Mingus. “He has learned that what endures in this profession is not rank or position, but the willingness of ordinary Americans to accept extraordinary responsibility on behalf of others.”
Ashley Roque contributed to this report.
This article was updated on 01/07/2025 at 2:50pm Eastern with a comment from a spokesperson for Gen. James Mingus.