Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao took to social media Saturday to promise his troops two things: he'll take care of their needs, and he'll build ships. Revolutionary stuff, really - a Navy that actually builds ships. Who knew?
Cao's video laid out his priorities with all the dramatic flair of a man who just got a promotion he didn't exactly campaign for. "We're going to build ships," he declared, as if the alternative was building more admirals. He also pledged to defend the homeland, which, fair enough, that's typically in the job description.
All this shipbuilding talk comes after Cao's predecessor, John Phelan, got the boot Wednesday - 13 months into the role and making history as the first service secretary canned in Trump's second term. Phelan joins a growing club of over 30 senior military officers shown the door under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which is starting to look less like a shakeup and more like a revolving door at a Pentagon gift shop.
The firing reportedly revolved around shipbuilding disagreements, specifically over the new Trump-class battleship - a name that definitely doesn't sound like it was chosen by a committee trying to flatter the boss. Trump announced the battleship class in December as part of the Navy's "Golden Fleet," with a goal of having the ships built by 2028. Experts, being the spoilsports they are, point out that this timeline is about as realistic as a submarine with windows, given the billions of dollars and years typically required to build a new battleship.
Phelan, before his ouster, floated the possibility of building ships outside the country, telling Navy Times that "everything's on the table" - a phrase that usually means someone's about to make a very controversial decision. Trump, meanwhile, told reporters that Phelan "had some conflicts with some other people, mostly as to building and buying new ships," adding that he "didn't really deal with him too much." Classic management technique: hire a guy, barely interact with him, then fire him because other people didn't get along with him.
Cao, a retired Navy captain and Naval Academy grad who previously ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Virginia - because why not add "political loser" to your resume before taking one of the most demanding jobs in the military - now gets to figure out how to build a battleship class that experts say can't be built on time. Good luck, Captain. You're going to need it.