President-elect Donald Trump has appointed billionaire investment fund manager and major Republican donor John Phelan as the 79th Secretary of the Navy.
It is my great honor to announce John Phelan as our next United States Secretary of the Navy! John will be a tremendous force for our Marines and a steadfast leader in advancing my America First vision. He will put the business of the U.S. Navy above all else.
John has excelled in every way, from founding and leading Rugger Management LLC to co-founding MSD Capital, LP, the private investment firm for Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Techologies. His track record speaks for itself – a true champion of American entrepreneurship and ingenuity!
John’s intelligence and leadership skills are unmatched. John has an MBA from Harvard Business School and is a truly brilliant guy! His incredible knowledge and experience will enrich the lives of the brave Americans who serve our nation. John will deliver real results for our Navy and our country. I look forward to working with him.
Congratulations, John – Together we will MAKE AMERICA STRONG AGAIN!
The challenges facing Phelan are enormous. The Navy is THE vital service in any conflict with China, but from an outsider’s perspective, this service appears to be not only broken, but also content to be unable to accomplish its mission.
The Navy’s shipbuilding is in the sewers. The organization that manages the shipbuilding life cycle for the Navy, NAVSEA has 86,000 people. The ships he designed have gone from being the best in their class to becoming a laughing stock. The much-vaunted “coastal combat ship” was not deployed to its intended location, the Red Sea, because its missile magazines do not contain enough missiles to defend against the Houthis. The plan to purchase a commercial cruiser to replace the now-retired Aegis cruisers has become a joke after the “fairy of good ideas” took charge of the project. The USS Connecticut, a Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine, encountered an “unexplored” underwater mountain in 2021. She is still in the shipyard. It is said to be back in service in September 2025, four years after the accident.
REPORT: “@NAVSEAthe shipbuilding and repair branch of the @USNavyemploys 83,000 people and has not built a single warship on time or within budget this century!” – @johnkonrad,From @gCaptain Maritime News highlights massive government inefficiency and cost overruns in Defense Department shipbuilding… pic.twitter.com/PZJlbj0gk8
– John Basham (@JohnBasham) November 8, 2024
We are decommissioning more ships than we are launching as China undertakes an unprecedented peacetime naval expansion.-
— Claude Berube (@cgberube) November 26, 2024
The AP makes a substantial deal out of Phelan’s “Lack of military experience“But given the state of the Navy, I believe a lack of experience in the institution is a feature, not a flaw, of Phelan’s nomination.
“It will be difficult for someone without experience at the Pentagon to lead a service and do a good job,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, senior fellow and director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security. “Service providers are sprawling organizations with different cultures, subcultures and bureaucratic interests in which decisions are made through many formal processes. To change a ministry’s plans, one must understand this Byzantine landscape.”
The secretary’s job is not that of the Navy, but that of administration. His job is to ensure that the admirals have a navy that can accomplish their mission.
While Joy Ried @MSNBC is irate about Trump’s picture for Secretary of the Navy John Phelan tonight, Joyless is FURNISHED that he was never a naval officer
It’s an ADMIN job
🫡🫡 pic.twitter.com/hmhiouWTFG– Greta_USA (@Greta_DAYS) November 28, 2024
Currently the Navy has more admirals than ships.
The US Navy has more admirals than ships, yet it cannot keep the Red Sea open or deliver novel ships on time.
How do Navy admirals spend their time? Travel around the world in 4-star hotels!
Here is their conference list for November
PS: The list for army and air force generals is even longer. pic.twitter.com/AsKLUq3C1E
— John and Konrad V (@johnkonrad) November 8, 2024
Phelan’s challenge will be to gain control of the bureaucracy within the Naval Secretariat, get rid of the bullsh** artists who only care about supporting the Naval Secretariat, and find a novel Chief of Naval Operations who will support his vision of it , where the service needs to go.
This kind of crap needs to be dealt with harshly and across the board.
The current Secretary of Defense is encouraging this in the Navy. Please spare me your lectures about qualifications. We’re all laughing at you. pic.twitter.com/t6MlBveWdV
– Uprising Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) November 24, 2024
The glorification of sexual perversion must stop; see “Rum, Buggery, and the Lash Makes a Comeback as the U.S. Navy Battles Recruitment Problems”; Well, you better hold the rum in your hand and recruit into the Navy: from heroes to “Harpy”, the drag queen.
A long-time acquaintance from our miblog days in the early 2000s, CDR Salamanderoffers this assessment.
President Trump will assemble his team in a way he believes will best serve his agenda. The above statement describes Phelan’s background. He’s a astute guy who wouldn’t be where he is if he didn’t have the ability to look at people and data and understand strengths and weaknesses.
My preferences for SECNAV – the resume of an unnamed person – have been shared here for several decades Midstreamand personally to anyone stupid enough to ask me. It has remained consistent and applies to both political parties: I would prefer someone with a political background, preferably from the House of Representatives. Someone who can walk into a room and quickly decide who has an itchy rib that needs to be scratched to do something that advances sea power. Who is worth your time and who is not. Who can be convinced, who must be avoided. Politics is a skill like any other. It can be learned, but best of all it is a proven skill. Second, there is someone who knows where the bodies are buried, how the windmill works, and who can avoid the noise around the Pentagon.
Phelan has a different skill set when he starts the job, and maybe that’s just what’s needed to shake things up. He will succeed SECNAV Del Toro, who held the post throughout the Biden administration. That should give him solid sales.
The next Palace game will be about who will be chosen as his player Below and the ASNs. Let’s hope the Senate approves the appointments quickly.
I agree. Phelan’s personal connection to Trump gives him an influence that makes him impossible to ignore. He has succeeded in a very hard business, which means he is good at assessing people and concentrating.
My favorite quote so far from researching our novel Secretary of the Navy?
“If you do stupid things, you will be labeled a fool” John Phelan, 2022 pic.twitter.com/HyyLJimpWY
— John and Konrad V (@johnkonrad) November 27, 2024
It’s good that he’s not a creature of the naval hierarchy and isn’t beholden to the military-industrial sophisticated for his next deployment. I cannot be convinced that any of these groups care about winning wars and protecting America.
