WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump wanted one thing more than anything else from his Navy Secretary John Phelan: a new class of battleships.
“They’re going to be the fastest, the biggest, and by far — 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump boasted at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club and resort in Florida, just days before Christmas. Phelan, a billionaire investor who has a home near the club, stood alongside the president during the announcement.
Phelan’s mission was to deliver the first of Trump’s battleships by 2028.
On Wednesday, Trump fired Phelan, who had struggled to come up with a plan capable of delivering the ships within the virtually impossible schedule demanded by the president, according to senior defense and administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter was a sensitive personnel matter.
Phelan is the first Force Secretary to be forced out of the Defense Department in this administration, although he is far from the only senior Pentagon official to fall. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired or fired more than two dozen generals and admirals over the past year, including Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George this month. Hegseth also butted heads with Secretary of the Army Daniel P. Driscoll over promotions and a host of other issues.
The musical chairs among the Pentagon’s top brass, at a time when the US military is at war with Iran, has alarmed influential Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
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The Pentagon did not respond to questions about the circumstances of Phelan’s departure. He could not immediately be reached for comment.
The breaking point for Phelan, who often said he and Trump texted and spoke on the phone frequently, came in the past two weeks, as the president’s frustration with his management of his favorite battleship program grew and Phelan’s opponents inside the Pentagon, including Hegseth and Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen A. Feinberg, mounted a campaign to oust him.
This month, Hegseth and Feinberg told Trump that the Navy secretary was not a “team player” and needed to leave, military officials reported. Trump called Phelan to talk about his poor relationship with other Pentagon leaders.
Feinberg and Hegseth had recently taken over some of the decision-making authority that had been in Phelan’s hands, naming a three-star admiral to command the Navy’s submarine portfolio, reporting directly to Feinberg.
Phelan was left to oversee a large package of investments in new ships that Trump calls the “golden fleet”, built around the battleship program desired by the president.
Presidents are rarely so involved in military procurement decisions, but Trump has repeatedly talked about his plans for a new class of “Trump-class” battleships. In a speech to soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in February, Trump insisted that he helped design the new class of ships that bear his name.
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“I put a little more soul in the hull,” Trump told the soldiers. “I want this ship to look stunning, you know.”
Phelan played a central role in selling the idea of the new ships to Trump and in presenting his ambitious plans to revitalize the US Navy fleet and the American shipping industry.
At the Senate confirmation hearing last year, Phelan said that the president often sent him messages late at night asking about “ships that were rusting or lying in a shipyard” — and what Phelan would do about them. Before the Navy put the hammer down on the design of the Trump-class battleship, Phelan reportedly captivated the president by showing oil paintings of large battleships from past Navy eras, according to defense officials.
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In the $1.5 trillion defense budget released this week, the Trump administration requests $65.8 billion for shipbuilding, the second-largest request for ship funding since 1955, according to data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The Navy also plans to borrow $17 billion in fiscal 2028 to begin construction of the first Trump-class ship, according to naval officials.
But senior defense officials say the program, like Trump’s grandiose plans for the “golden fleet,” is fraught with problems. The American naval industry does not currently have the capacity to build, in the coming years, a technologically advanced battleship of the type imagined by Trump, say high-ranking officials.
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The Trump administration has also failed, over the past 16 months, to nominate anyone for the position of Undersecretary for Research, Development and Acquisition — responsible for overseeing the Navy’s weapons programs. And the Navy’s civilian workforce, which plays a crucial role in developing and testing new warships, has been decimated by cuts and early retirements, military officials say.
In the days following Trump’s announcement of his new battleships, defense experts began to question whether they would ever be built.
“The characteristics supposedly attributed to the ship are so extraordinary that the announcement will certainly generate enormous debate,” wrote Mark F. Cancian, a military budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “However, there is no need for this debate, because that ship will never sail.”
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The ship would take “years to design,” Cancian noted. “A future government will cancel the program before the first hull touches the water.”
In Trump’s imagination, the new warship would be gigantic, with a displacement of up to 40,000 tons, and would carry high-tech weapons, including lasers, hypersonic missiles and electromagnetic cannons (railguns), most of which are still under development and years away from actually being used.
In recent weeks, it became clear to Phelan that the U.S. Navy and shipping industry were unable to deliver what Trump wanted. According to senior military officers and members of the government, Phelan even suggested to the president that the Navy might have to resort to European shipyards to be able to put the battleships in the water within the required deadline.
Trump rejected the idea.
At the December press conference at which he announced his plans for the battleships, the president had promised that the ships — “the largest battleships ever built in the history of the world” — would be made in the United States, with American steel.
“We will restore the United States as a great shipbuilding power,” he said.
Trump and Hegseth agreed that the Navy needed new leadership, officials said, and the president asked Hegseth to lead Phelan’s departure.
On Wednesday, Phelan learned he would be fired and went to the White House to try to speak to Trump, officials reported. He was unable to reach him, but the president later called to confirm the resignation, they added.
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