Senate Confirms Hung Cao as Undersecretary of the Navy

 

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Capt. Hung Cao (USN, ret'd) as the next Undersecretary of the Navy. 

Cao, the son of a high-ranking South Vietnamese official, came to the U.S. as a refugee after the end of the Vietnam War. He attended Annapolis and commissioned as a special operations officer in 1996, working his way up through the ranks in deployments overseas during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

After retiring at the rank of captain in 2021, he mounted two campaigns for elected office in Virginia as a Republican candidate, with President Donald Trump's endorsement. Both were both unsuccessful.

The undersecretary's role is powerful, responsible for the day-to-day affairs of the department as the Navy's chief operating officer and chief management officer. Cao faces serious challenges ahead, including cost overruns and delays in shipbuilding, rising Chinese pressure in the Strait of Taiwan and South China Sea, and the need to operationalize unmanned technology to maintain the Navy's edge.

Cao, an outspoken opponent of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, is aligned well with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's policies for the defense establishment. He also has strong ties to the White House, having campaigned with the president in the 2024 election cycle. Politico Pro reports that Cao's new supervisor, Navy Secretary John Phelan, has taken steps to contain Cao's potentially significant sway: By reassigning aides, routing correspondence through Phelan's chief of staff, and vetting any new hires for Cao's office, they hope to limit the undersecretary's reach to policy implementation rather than policymaking - maximizing control at the level of the secretary's office, Politico's sources reported.