President-elect Donald Trump has recently announced his intent to nominate John Phelan to be secretary of the Navy. Phelan, a businessman with no military experience, is going to have his hands full trying to right-size a service that has been on the wrong track for almost thirty years.
His lack of military experience should not be an inherent handicap in this job, because the role of the service secretary is to organize, train, and equip their respective services. But what will immediately trip him up is if he does not work right away to establish a good relationship with the legislative leaders who can make or break his plans going forward.
While Phelan will be focused on the Senate Armed Services Committee because they will guide his nomination through the Senate, he should use this time to meet and engage with key members of the Senate Appropriation Committees, as well as the key committee members in the House — and come armed with near-term fixes that he needs Congress to make in order to enable him to hit the ground running. If he cannot convince Congress to act now, he will essentially spend the next year sailing in circles.
Here are three areas he should ask Congress to help him out: recruiting, acquisition, and resources.
Recruitment: One of the most important issues he will need to tackle are the shortfalls in manpower across the Navy. These shortfalls are so critical that failing to fix them may send the Navy into a near-term operational death-spiral, which would leave Phelan unable to meet the needs of the president should a crisis erupt.
The multi-service recruiting crisis has been years in the making and therefore will likely take several years to fix. However, the incoming secretary can take a huge leap forward in fixing the problem by endorsing the House proposal to increase the pay of junior enlisted service members by 19 percent. Inflation, along with higher minimum wages and a looming demographic cliff that will result in fewer potential recruits, all point to the need for this very large pay raise. If not enacted in the 2025 NDAA, the incoming secretary will have to wait another year. Therefore, this is something Phelan should address with the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation prep.
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Acquisition: Phelan will need to move fast to change the acquisition paradigm of the Navy. The recent PPBE reform commission outlined key reforms that can only be implemented by the Appropriators; however, the current FY25 Appropriation bill reports contain language that essentially state that the committees will not provide additional funding flexibility.
With the probable delay into March of the appropriation process, Phelan can work with the leaders of the Appropriation Committees in the Senate and House to create flexible funding lines to enable him to rapidly alter procurement within the Navy. For example, he can ask them to consolidate into one funding line the research, development, and procurement for all unmanned sea and air systems within the service. Failure to gain this flexibility will result in the secretary spending the next year fighting to align resources rather than improving the warfighting capabilities of the Navy.
Resources: Perhaps the most important change he needs to ask the Congress for is to support additional time and resources for the National Commission on the Future of the Navy. As my colleague Mackenzie Eaglen has noted, Congress waited 439 days to seat the eight commissioners. Having the NDAA extend the commissions timeline and funding will be critically important as this Commission will need to work closely with the incoming secretary to align on the strategic shift for the Navy and more importantly, the decade-long resources needed to accomplish fix the Navy.
If Phelan attempts to implement his strategic pivot alone, he will be forever inviting alternative plans from the Joint Staff, OSD, OMB, Defense Industry, and Congress. If, however, his plan for reforming the Navy aligns with the Commission, a strong case can be made that the plan will outlive Phelan’s tenure.
During normal times, it is sage advice that the nominee should speak sparsely and get confirmed. These however, are not normal times. The Navy is broken, the President wants to disrupt the status quo, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are leading a government reform effort, and China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are actively fighting proxy wars with the United States.
Phelan needs help from Congress, help that cannot wait until next year. He ought to walk in and ask for the pay raise for junior enlisted, acquisition flexibility from the appropriators, and an extension to the timeline for the National Commission on the Future of the Navy.
Retired US Army Maj. Gen. John G. Ferrari is a senior nonresident fellow at AEI. Ferrari previously served as a director of program analysis and evaluation for the service.