WASHINGTON — Former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot was asked to resign this week, a senior defense official told The Associated Press on Thursday, in the latest shakeup for the Defense Department following firings and other changes under President Donald Trump.

Ullyot was one of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s initial hires for the communications office and oversaw some of its most highly visible but controversial moves, including a broad edict to the military services to strip away online images^[1] and other content considered a promotion of diversity, equity or inclusion.

That directive, given under a wide-ranging Trump administration effort to purge so-called DEI content^[2] from federal agencies, led to public outcry when images of national heroes like Jackie Robinson^[3] were briefly removed.

Ullyot’s departure is the fourth this week among Hegseth’s former inner circle. Three other senior officials were escorted from the building this week after being implicated in an ongoing investigation into information leaks: Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg; Darin Selnick, Hegseth's deputy chief of staff; and Dan Caldwell, an aide to Hegseth^[4].

It was not immediately clear what leaks led to the departures. Caldwell and Selnick had worked with the defense secretary during his time leading the nonprofit Concerned Veterans for America.

Under Hegseth, the communications office has made significant changes to how it works with Pentagon reporters, including removing many news outlets from their longtime workspaces and not yet holding weekly briefings.

Ullyot was transferred out of the communications office in late March following the blowback from the Pentagon's purge of Robinson and a bungled public affairs response. Also, in his emailed responses to journalists, Ullyot referred to himself as the Pentagon press secretary. But Hegseth had hired Sean Parnell to speak for him from the Pentagon's podium.

In an emailed response to the AP on Thursday, Ullyot said he told Hegseth when he was hired he “was not interested in being number two to anyone in public affairs” and that the understanding was always that he would stay only for about two months to help get the communications office up and running. When no other suitable position was found for him, Ullyot said he decided to resign.

But a senior defense official familiar with the decision said that wasn't the case and that Hegseth's office had requested that Ullyot resign.

Ullyot, who shared his resignation letter^[5] with AP, disputed the official's account, calling it “flat out false and laughable.”

Ullyot’s resignation Wednesday was not tied to the inquiry into the unauthorized disclosures. Two other U.S. officials said Carroll, Selnick and Caldwell were placed on leave in that investigation.

All three officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details that have not been made public.

The departures follow a purge of senior military officers, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown^[6]; Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti; National Security Agency^[7] and U.S. Cyber Command director Gen. Tim Haugh; and Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield^[8], the U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee.

More than a month after announcing an indefinite bombing campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Defense Department has offered little information and the command overseeing the campaign is refusing to answer even basic questions on what U.S. forces have accomplished in the area or whether troops have been under fire or injured.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees all military operations in the Middle East, has spent the past 30 days making near-daily social media posts about its operations against the Houthis, but those posts have been little more than videos of flight operations on the aircraft carrier^[1] in the region and generic statements^[2] capped off with the hashtag^[3] "HouthisAreTerrorists."^[4]

While some level of secrecy or information delay has always been part of military operations, the shift to actively refusing to provide even the most basic details about what service members are doing in a major military operation -- the size of which has likely not been undertaken in years -- is highly unusual. It's also paired with a near-total lack of press briefings by the Pentagon's top spokesman and a growing number of reports that the mission is not accomplishing any of its broader goals.

Read Next: Top Enlisted Leader at Air Force Special Operations Command Fired, Facing Investigation^[5]

Military.com asked U.S. Central Command this week to offer any details on accomplishments in the region and for basic data on its operations like number of missions flown, a summary of the ordinance dropped or targets that were hit.

In response, an official replied less than two hours later with a statement that said: "The U.S. has hit targets in Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen, destroying command and control facilities, weapons manufacturing facilities, and advanced weapons storage locations," and it had "confirmed the death of several Houthi leader [sic]."

When asked follow-up questions on the claims or whether the combatant command was refusing to answer the questions, a different official simply re-sent the same statement minutes later and added a line: "We have nothing additional to provide at this time."

The attitude is a notable departure from the command's behavior under the Biden administration when it would regularly release updates on social media^[6] for the more than 100 strikes it conducted in Yemen since October 2023. While Central Command still insisted on withholding details such as the types of ordinance that was used, the posts included lists of targets hit by specific strikes and by what platforms, when U.S. warships were targeted and what Houthi assets were destroyed.

Those updates would also note whether any U.S. personnel were injured.

The last such update was posted on Dec. 31, 2024^[7].

Despite lofty promises, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's office has not been any better at offering insight into the Yemen military operation, now in its second month.

Just days before the campaign kicked off, the Pentagon's top spokesman, Sean Parnell, posted a video in which he promised^[8] to offer weekly updates and "to be the most transparent DoD in American history for the warfighters and the American people."

However, Parnell has only hosted one press conference since taking the job, compared to the Trump White House and State Department that have been providing regular public press briefings for months.

In his latest video update, Parnell only offered the following statement on the fighting in the Red Sea: "It's been a bad three weeks for the Houthis and it's about to get a lot worse."

What few details that are public or that have been gleaned by journalists paint a picture of a campaign that seems to be racking up costs and expending valuable munition stocks but accomplishing little in its stated goal of reopening the Red Sea to merchant shipping.

CNN reported earlier this month that the operation's costs were nearing $1 billion^[9] while having limited impact on destroying the Houthi's capabilities.

The report noted that the strikes had used hundreds of millions of dollars of munitions that included Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, or JASSMs, and Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles and Joint Standoff Weapon^[10]s, or JSOW^[11]s -- GPS^[12]-guided glide bombs.

Multiple outlets^[13] have also reported that the Houthis have managed to down^[14] several U.S. MQ-9 Reaper^[15] drones, which cost about $30 million each, since the campaign began.

Meanwhile, multiple reports noted that the air attacks are unlikely to be enough^[16] to defeat the Houthi rebels and may actually be emboldening them in the process^[17].

Data on transits of the Suez Canal^[18] and a key chokepoint in the Red Sea also show that the weekslong campaign that has cost millions has done nothing to move the needle on the volume of merchant shipping that is moving through the area.

Salvatore Mercogliano, a maritime historian and former merchant mariner, told Military.com that he doesn't see the shipping situation changing until insurance companies lower the cost of the "war risk insurance" that shipping companies have to pay to transit the area, and he's seen little change that would convince the insurance firms to substantially lower rates.

Plus, at the same time, going around Africa instead of through the Red Sea is utilizing the extra cargo space the companies now have and that's generating higher rates for them, he said.

"In a situation where insurance companies are making money for those ships transiting the Red Sea and shipping firms maintaining their profitability, there is little incentive to change the business operations," Mercogliano said.

"Plus, if the Red Sea opens, we are going to have three months of chaos in ports, on top of Trump's trade policies," he added.

Central Command chose to not answer the question of whether there were any metrics it had that showed a positive impact on re-establishing shipping traffic in the Red Sea when asked by Military.com.

In the meantime, neither U.S. Central Command nor Hegseth's office has offered any more details on what will prompt an end to operations.

During the single briefing Parnell held in late March, he told reporters that "there's going to be ... a very clear end state to this" without elaborating.

Related: The Last Houthi Attack Was Months Ago. But the US Military Has Now Launched an Open-Ended Campaign in Yemen.^[19]