USS Stockdale leads ships behind aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson
WASHINGTON: Carlos Del Toro, a Naval Academy graduate and CEO of a tech consultancy, is the Biden administration’s likely nominee for Navy Secretary.
After coming to the United States as a child from Cuba in 1962, Del Toro would go on to become the first Hispanic to serve as the first captain of an Aegis cruiser or destroyer, a career that included Middle East deployments during Operation Desert Storm.
The Navy remains the only service without a nominee for its civilian secretary, after the Biden administration nominated long-time Pentagon officials Christine Wormuth to lead the Army and Frank Kendall to run the Air Force.
The Navy has perhaps the most complicated and expensive modernization plan percolating inside the Pentagon, and stands to benefit the most from the Biden administration’s first budget, which is due later this spring.
It is also the service with the most turmoil in its civilian leadership ranks. The revolving door began in November 2019 when Richard Spencer was fired after getting sideways with the Trump White House on a variety of issues, followed by the sacking of acting secretary Thomas Modly in April 2020 after an eventful five-month tenure which culminated in his mishandling of the Covid outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt.
Finally, the Senate confirmed Kenneth Braithwaite in May 2020, who served without incident or drama until the Biden administration assumed office in January, naming Thomas Harker as the Navy’s latest acting civilian secretary
After serving in the Navy, where he deployed aboard multiple ships from frigates to aircraft carriers, Del Toro went on to found SBG Technology Solutions, a Virginia-based government contractor in 2004, according to his bio on the Naval Academy’s alumni site.
Politico was the first to report on Del Toro’s consideration, which was independently confirmed by Breaking Defense.
The Navy is facing a range of thorny problems in the immediate future that will demand close attention by civilian and uniformed leaders with the trust of both Pentagon leadership and the White House. The decisions include implementing a $21 billion plan to repair and upgrade aging shipyards, developing new classes of submarines, frigates, and hundreds of unmanned ships, while pushing forward on building and deploying the new Columbia-class submarine and Ford-class aircraft carriers.
Members of Congress have grown frustrated at the slow pace of the White House’s efforts to name a new Navy Secretary, including Rep. Joe Courtney, the House’s leading voice on seapower issues and the chairman of the Seapower subcommittee. Speaking last month at a seapower-related event, Courtney said that while acting civilians can be effective in their jobs, often those “career officials find it very difficult to make those high-level decisions about priorities and policy” that are demanded.
During a House Armed Services Committee hearing last month, HASC member Rep. Mike Gallagher, whose district includes the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard which will build the first 10 Constellation-class frigates, pleaded with the White House to name a civilian to run the Navy.
“It would be great — if the Biden administration is listening — if they moved with a sense of urgency to nominate a secretary of the Navy,” Gallagher said. “This is our priority force, in the priority theater.”
Early on, the administration had considered Janine Davidson — a former undersecretary of the Navy — for the position, along with Michelle Howard, a retired four-star Admiral who was the first African-American woman to command a Navy ship at sea.
Howard, who worked on the Biden transition team, would have required a waiver from Congress to serve as she has not been out of the military for the legally required five years to take the civilian job. The White House didn’t relish the idea of a new fight, after lobbying Congress to grant the waiver to Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense earlier this year.
Del Toro would not be the first Hispanic American to serve as Navy Secretary; that title belongs to Eduardo Hidalgo, who served during the Carter administration.
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