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Senate Holds Hearing on Trump's Pick for Navy Secretary

Phelan
John Phelan (center right) and his family before the Senate Armed Services Committee (Courtesy SASC)

Published Feb 27, 2025 4:15 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held the first confirmation hearing for President Donald Trump's nominee for the next Secretary of the Navy, the financier, political donor and art collector John Phelan. Phelan testified on his views of the Navy's most urgent problems and fielded questions from committee members, providing detailed answers to questions about specific programs and describing the need to reform contracting processes. 

If confirmed, Phelan would be the first Navy Secretary in recent memory without any professional experience in or with the military. It would also be the largest management role of his career: at the Navy, he would oversee a sprawling global enterprise with 340,000 active-duty servicemembers, 100,000 reservists, 220,000 civilian employees, over 50 base installations, and a supply chain of overstretched and over-budget contractors. (Forecast layoffs and cost-cutting at the Pentagon level may reduce the service's head count in the near term.)

In the hearing, Phelan pitched his outsider status as an asset. "The Navy and the Marine Corps already possess extraordinary operational expertise within their ranks," he said. "My role is to utilize that expertise and strengthen it, step outside the status quo and take decisive action with a results-oriented approach."

Phelan acknowledged the serious challenges facing the Navy, including the hard fact that it risks losing dominance on the high seas. China's overwhelming advantage in shipbuilding and heavy investment in fleet modernization have made the PLA Navy the largest naval force by tonnage in the world. Its surface combatants are backed up by the world's largest merchant fleet and a growing inventory of antiship ballistic missiles. 

"Every shipbuilding delay, every maintenance backlog and every inefficiency is an opening for our adversaries to challenge our dominance. We cannot allow that to happen," said Phelan. "I would push for a more agile, accountable and flexible shipbuilding strategy by streamlining procurement, enhancing budget flexibility, strengthening partnerships with the defense industrial base, and holding contractors accountable for cost and schedule overruns."

The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to approve Phelan's nomination in early March, followed by approval from the Republican-controlled Senate.