On Thursday, Secretary of the Navy nominee John Phelan spoke to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, and it was an interesting conversation. Mr. Phelan laid out his priorities, if confirmed, very plainly: Shipbuilding, training, shipbuilding, promoting warfighters instead of woke scolds, shipbuilding, and I think he mentioned building more ships:

Speaking at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Phelan, a former private investor and businessman, emphasized his and President Donald Trump’s commitment to increasing the number of ships that comprise the military’s naval fleet. As The Federalist previously reported, the size of America’s naval fleet and the country’s shipbuilding capacity have diminished significantly in recent decades, going from a fleet of more than 500 ships at the end of the Cold War to less than 300 as of this month.

A navy can't do much without ships, and there's another problem here; building a ship isn't like rolling out a truck or even a tank. Building a ship can take months, and in the case of something like one of our great super-carriers, years. And there's always the chance that any ship-building started by one administration won't be halted by the next, taking us back to square one.

“The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps remain the most formidable expeditionary force in the world. But the U.S. Navy is at a crossroads,” Phelan said. “Extended deployments, inadequate maintenance, huge cost overruns, delayed shipbuilding, failed audits, subpar housing, and sadly, record-high suicide rates, are systemic failures that have gone unaddressed for far too long. And frankly, this is unacceptable.”

Quoting Bull Halsey was a boss move.

He said, "Admiral Bull Halsey put it best: 'All problems become smaller if you don't dodged them but confront them.' If confirmed, that is exactly what I will do."

In one clip from Thursday's testimony C-SPAN posted on their X account, John Phelan, responding to a question from Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), described his plan for restoring the U.S. Navy:

It's very complicated because this is a huge organization. It's very complex, with a lot of tradition. I think at the end of the day, I have to work with the key senior leadership and set the vision and the tone for what we are going to try to accomplish. And, and I'm hopeful that a large majority of that leadership is on board with that vision and that tone, and with what we're going to try to do. If they're not, then they should reconsider staying on, ultimately. I need them, and they're going to need me. So we need to work together in order to try to turn this around. 

I think we're at a, as I said, a critical inflection point. I do not, I take our adversaries at their word. These are very strong people who are going to question, to try to take on our dominance, and try to supplant the United States. I think we're at a much more critical time than most people recognize. And so, I think we need to fix the Navy. 

I think Ronald Reagan said 'The only thing more expensive than a navy is not having a good navy,' and I believe that's actually right. I think it's basically setting the proper vision, setting the proper benchmarks, key performance indicators and then creating the appropriate feedback loops to make sure we're getting those done and having the right team to do it.

After the 2024 election and (then) President-elect Trump's announcement of his intention to put John Phelan up for the post, RedState's own streiff weighed in on John Phelan's nomination:

See Related: Trump Picks Navy Outsider to Fix a Thoroughly Broken Service

Any peer-to-peer conflict the United States Navy is likely to encounter in the next few years, indeed probably the next few decades, has one name on the list: China. A possible war with China would be fought largely over control of the Pacific Ocean and would be a high-tech version of the Pacific campaigns in World War 2, with the added factors of things like drone swarms and satellite intelligence thrown in. We'll need ships, but we'll also need people, highly trained, technically and tactically proficient people - warfighters.

Training, it would seem, is going to be a key challenge; lately, basic ship-handling is a question.

See Related: US Navy: Super-Carrier, Merchant Ship Collide in Mediterranean Sea

Our armed forces have been badly used for at least the last four years, although a lot of the decline began with the Obama administration and even before that, under Bill Clinton. A military force takes time to rebuild, recruit, re-arm, and re-train. President Trump seems to be putting the right people in the top spots, but will America's adversaries give us the time?

Ay, there's the rub.