The President of the United States, Donald Trump, stated on Thursday, 23, that he fired the Secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, due to conflicts with members of the Pentagon over the construction and purchase of ships.
Phelan’s resignation had been announced by the Pentagon on Wednesday night, the 22nd. “Phelan is leaving the administration, effective immediately,” wrote department spokesman Sean Parnell in a statement released on social media. He was replaced on an interim basis by Undersecretary of the Navy Hung Cao.
“He is very energetic and has had some conflicts with other people, particularly over building and purchasing new ships,” Trump said in a conversation with reporters in the Oval Office. “I’m very aggressive about building new ships, and somehow he just didn’t get along with them.”
“You have to get along, especially in the military. You have to get along, you know, and some people liked him, some people didn’t – and that’s generally the truth about everything,” he added.
A congressional staffer told The New York Times on condition of anonymity that Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg was dissatisfied with Phelan’s handling of the Navy’s major shipbuilding initiative and had removed some project-related responsibilities from him.
According to the newspaper, Phelan also had tensions with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth due to disagreements over management style, personnel issues and other issues. The relationship with the undersecretary of the Navy also faced problems, especially since Cao was more aligned with Hegseth.
‘Revamped’ Golden Fleet
At the end of last year, Trump announced, alongside Phelan, the construction of a new “Golden Fleet” of advanced warships, which are being designed and should begin construction from 2030.
According to the Reuters news agency, the Trump administration’s Defense budget proposal for 2027 includes more than US$65 billion for the acquisition of 18 warships and 16 support ships also as part of the “Golden Fleet”.
“They will be the fastest, the biggest and, by far, 100 times more powerful than any warship ever built,” Trump said at the time.
According to a BBC report in December last year, the announcement is part of an expansion planned by the US presidency for the Navy, covering both manned and unmanned vessels, including warships more armed with missiles and smaller vessels.
Once completed, Trump said the armed vessels would be equipped to carry hypersonic and “extremely lethal” weapons, and would be the flagships of the US Navy.
Defense Changes
Phelan’s resignation, which comes amid the war in the Middle East and the naval blockade of Iran, is yet another of the changes promoted by the Trump administration among Defense Department leadership since January last year.
In the first week of his second term, Trump fired the commander of the US Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Fagan. The following month, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Q. Brown, was fired in a military shake-up in which six other Pentagon officials were also dismissed.
In April last year, it was General Timothy Haugh’s turn to be fired as director of the National Security Agency (NSA), amid a wave of layoffs in the area of national security.
Four months later, Hegseth promoted three other dismissals at the Pentagon, which included Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, who headed the department’s intelligence agency.
Earlier this month, Hegseth fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. He did not provide justifications for the decision, but, according to two American officials interviewed by Reuters, it was motivated by tensions between the head of the Pentagon and the Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll.
In the same week, the leader of the Army Transformation and Training Command, General David Hodne, and the head of the Army Chaplain Corps, Major General William Green, were also dismissed.
*with international agencies
