WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today chaired a hearing reviewing the nomination of Mr. John Phelan to be Secretary of the Navy.

In his opening statement, Chairman Wicker described the crisis of readiness and growth within the fleet even as the Navy receives increased budgetary support. These challenges, the Chairman argued, demand bold leadership to achieve better outcomes for U.S. naval strength.

Chairman Wicker highlighted past naval leadership failures to address amphibious ship and submarine construction, ship repair, and an overall vision for future force structure.

Phelan, an accomplished financier and business leader, met with Chairman Wicker in January to discuss his nomination. Read more about Chairman Wicker’s vision for the Navy here and here.

Read Senator Wicker’s opening statement as delivered below.

The hearing will come to order. The committee on Armed Services is meeting to consider the nomination of Mr. John Phelan to be Secretary of the Navy.

Mr. Phelan has had a distinguished career in the private sector. His background showcases his ability to manage complex business deals to drive efficiency and to deliver results. Our Navy will need someone with all three of those skills and more to get our Navy back on the right track.

The Navy is up against significant challenges, and the nominee before us can be a crucial part of that solution. We, also, my colleagues – need to be part of that solution.

Congress, industry, and Navy leadership have all contributed to these problems. We must all work together to solve the issues facing us. We must begin by addressing the most urgent need – getting ship building back on track. Our sailors have performed admirably in combat operations, but Navy leadership has been unable to grow the fleet even as its budget has been increased.

The Navy remains woefully short of the statutory requirement of 355 ships – the statutory requirement. Just about every major shipbuilding program is behind schedule, over budget, or irreparably off track. For years, we've seen significant delays. The failures are everywhere. Ford-class carriers, Virginia-class submarines, Constellation-class frigates all are behind schedule. Every year, the Navy shipbuilding plan promises future growth. In reality, we've only watched as the fleet diminished.

In December 2020, the shipbuilding plan said the Navy would grow to 315 ships by 2025. Here we are in 2025, and we have only 287 ships. It's clear that we have not gotten the job done. We have not gotten the job done. Together, we can work to fix that.

We must stabilize shipbuilding programs, adopt commercial best practices, and incentivize the shipyards to address workforce and productivity issues in a collaborative, rather than combative manner. And we can quickly inject innovation into naval procurement, particularly on unmanned ships.

The story of naval maintenance is no better than the story of shipbuilding. Our maintenance performance is unimpressive across ship classes. For just one example, last year, multiple amphibious ships were unable to deploy on time. Instead, they sat in the yards waiting for repairs. Sailors have been trained on fewer than half the required maintenance tasks and only have enough time to accomplish 40% of required maintenance. The reduced quality of recruits exacerbates the situation.

This chain of events raises cost and creates schedule challenges for ship repair yards down the line. Deployments increase and the number of older ships decreases, sending the Navy into a death spiral.

I'm painting a dismal picture, but an accurate picture.

The Navy struggles to man the fleet. The previous administration paid too much attention to demographic traits, which contributed to the Navy's failure to meet its recruiting goals. The Navy did eventually meet last year's recruiting targets, but only by lowering standards. Last year, nearly 20% of Navy recruits were considered category IV – they tested below the 30th percentile on the military aptitude test – below the 30th percentile.

Recruiting has improved significantly over the last few months, but the Navy must keep up this recruiting pace for the next three years to fill the estimated 20,000 vacancies on our ships today. Consistently deploying undermanned ships exhausts sailors and creates real operational risks, as the Navy knows all too well from its own accident investigations.

The stakes are high. We face a threat environment more complex than any since World War II. Our Naval forces must be ready to operate in highly contested environments from the Western Pacific to the Atlantic, and from the North Sea to the Red Sea and beyond.

The Navy's role in our national security is more important than any moment since World War II at exactly the worst time the service has been beset with poor management and a lack of vision.

I'm pleased with the nominee's track record. He has rescued companies in distress. Our Navy is certainly in distress and needs that same kind of leadership.

So, I look forward to hearing Mr. Phelan’s views about how to fix shipbuilding, maintenance, and recruitment in the Navy, and I now recognize ranking member Reed for his opening remarks.