high-end air defense systems<\/a>, which have been in heavy use in Iran.<\/p>\nTensions had been simmering for months between Mr. Phelan and his two bosses \u2014 Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Feinberg \u2014 over management style, personnel issues and other matters.<\/p>\n
Mr. Feinberg, in particular, had grown increasingly dissatisfied with Mr. Phelan\u2019s handling of the Navy\u2019s major new shipbuilding initiative, and had been siphoning off responsibility for the project from him, said the congressional official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.<\/p>\n
Mr. Phelan, a White House appointee, also had a contentious relationship with his deputy, Under Secretary Hung Cao, who is more aligned with Mr. Hegseth, especially on some of the social and cultural battles that have defined the defense secretary\u2019s tenure, the officials said.<\/p>\n
A senior administration official said that Mr. Hegseth informed Mr. Phelan before the Pentagon\u2019s official announcement that he and President Trump had decided that the Navy needed new leadership.<\/p>\n
A spokeswoman for Mr. Phelan referred all questions on Wednesday evening to the Defense Department.<\/p>\n
Last fall, Mr. Hegseth fired Mr. Phelan\u2019s chief of staff, Jon Harrison, who had clashed with senior officials throughout the Pentagon. The unusual move highlighted the broader tensions between Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Phelan.<\/p>\n
Still, the timing of Mr. Phelan\u2019s firing caught some Pentagon and congressional officials off guard. On Wednesday, Mr. Phelan was making the rounds on Capitol Hill, talking to senators about his upcoming annual hearing with lawmakers to discuss the Navy\u2019s budget request and other priorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecretary Phelan\u2019s abrupt dismissal is troubling,\u201d Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Wednesday night. \u201cIn the midst of President Trump\u2019s war of choice in Iran, at a moment when our naval forces are stretched thin across multiple theaters, this kind of disruption at the top sends the wrong signal to our sailors and Marines, to our allies, and to our adversaries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Phelan also had a close relationship with Mr. Trump. In December, Mr. Phelan appeared alongside Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort to announce the \u201cGolden Fleet\u201d and the new class of battleships bearing Mr. Trump\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn Phelan is one of the most successful businessmen in the country \u2014 in our country,\u201d Mr. Trump said. \u201cHe\u2019s been a tremendous success.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before joining the Trump administration, Mr. Phelan ran a private investment fund based in Florida. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s taken probably the largest salary cut in history, but he wanted to do it,\u201d Mr. Trump said at the December press conference. \u201cHe wants to rebuild our Navy. And you needed that kind of a brain to do it properly.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Mr. Trump\u2019s effusive praise masked deeper tensions with Mr. Phelan\u2019s Pentagon bosses.<\/p>\n
Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Hudson Institute, said that Mr. Phelan was \u201cdriving the Navy in a different direction\u201d than what Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Feinberg wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was championing initiatives like the battleship and frigate that don\u2019t align with where the D.O.W. leadership is taking the military, which is toward submarines, stealth aircraft, unmanned systems and software-driven capabilities like electronic warfare and cyber,\u201d Mr. Clark said in an email, using the abbreviation for Department of War, as the administration calls the Defense Department.<\/p>\n
Mr. Phelan also clashed with Mr. Hegseth over personnel issues in the Navy and Marine Corps, a former senior military official said. Mr. Hegseth has directed service secretaries to scrub the social media accounts of general- and admiral-level promotion candidates to ensure they are not deemed too \u201cwoke\u201d by Mr. Hegseth\u2019s standards, the official said.<\/p>\n
Maggie Haberman and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Navy Secretary John Phelan was fired on Wednesday after months of infighting with senior Pentagon leaders and disagreements…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11288,4471,9,11,10,4472,5251,35554],"class_list":{"0":"post-206801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-appointments-and-executive-changes","9":"tag-hegseth","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-pete","14":"tag-united-states-defense-and-military-forces","15":"tag-united-states-navy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}