Navy Secretary John Phelan was abruptly fired Wednesday after months of infighting among top defense officials and struggles to speed up Navy shipbuilding.
In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Phelan was “departing the administration, effective immediately.”
“We are grateful to Secretary Phelan for his service to the Department and the United States Navy,” Parnell said in a social media post. “We wish him well in his future endeavors. Undersecretary Hung Cao will become Acting Secretary of the Navy.”
Phelan’s sudden departure came in the same week as the Navy’s annual Sea-Air-Space 2026 conference in National Harbor, Md., where he addressed an audience of top Navy and industry leaders.
President Trump has made Navy and commercial shipbuilding a priority for his administration, hoping to establish superiority over China and other near-peer powers. Part of that effort has been styled as a new “Golden Fleet” initiative for Navy shipbuilding, including a new “Trump class” guided missile battleship class.
CNN reported tensions had built for months between Phelan, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg over the pace of shipbuilding reforms. The dispute came to a head on Wednesday when Trump and Hegseth met on shipbuilding, according to CNN.
The Washington Post reported that rivalry between Phelan and Hegseth was aggravated earlier by how officials handled Trump’s announcement of the future battleship in December 2025. Another recent misstep was Phelan’s openness to outsourcing some Navy vessel construction to overseas shipyards, a subject he brought up again this week at Sea-Air-Space.
